


that dreadful overflowing sound

by belovedmuerto



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Empath John, M/M, empath!John, experiments in empathy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-13
Updated: 2013-12-15
Packaged: 2017-12-26 10:14:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 23
Words: 30,810
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/964758
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/belovedmuerto/pseuds/belovedmuerto
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After a traffic collision, John finds himself without his empathy. Things get messy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> You guys, this isn't finished yet. I'm hoping that by posting these first two chapters I'll be able to get over the awkward hump I'm straddling wherein I desperately want to write but I haaaaaaaate this so much and it won't cooperate. Also, the structure miiiiiiiiight change. Although it might not, too. I don't know. I know nothing at this point except I NEED to finish this so I can move on to... well, to more pain and angst. Sorry not sorry.
> 
> So please send lots of encouragement. 
> 
> Also, it's neither beta'd thus far nor brit picked, so there's that as well.

Chapter 1: Sherlock

He doesn’t so much wake up as regain some semblance of consciousness. Enough, anyway, to know that he’s not fully cognizant and that something is very, very wrong. 

Enough to realize, after several minutes of bleary examinations of his surroundings, that he’s in hospital, and that John is not next to him, where he belongs.

Sherlock feels as though something is missing. Well, he _also_ feels like something is missing. Most of his cognition is taken up right now by the amount of pain he’s in. But something is missing, something important, and he doesn't like how that feels, like his brain is half empty, like one of his limbs is gone. He hates not knowing what it is. After several more long minutes of contemplation, he’s able to lift each of his arms, one at a time, to determine that both of his hands are still present, and all of his fingers accounted for. One of his arms is tethered to several IV lines, but he knows he doesn’t have the energy to rip them out, not yet.

He can feel his toes as well, but he doesn’t trust that sensation. Sherlock knows all about phantom pain and phantom limbs, the phenomenon is fascinating. Luckily, he’s elevated enough in the hospital bed that he can see his feet beneath the blanket spread over his legs, and he moves them, one at a time, enough to be fairly certain all of his toes are present as well.

Relief floods through him. He’s not missing any limbs, anyway. Probably. Unless he’s hallucinating. His right arm, however, must have been dislocated at the very least in the crash, if the soreness of that shoulder is any indication.

The sense that something is missing doesn’t abate, though, and he slips back into the darkness still wondering what it is that’s gone, and grieving its loss because he knows it is vitally important.

\----

The next time he comes to, John's name is on his lips and Mycroft is sat in a chair next to his bed, directly in Sherlock’s line of sight. His tie is loosened just the tiniest bit, no one but Sherlock would notice, and his umbrella is nowhere in sight--practically the equivalent of Sherlock wandering London in naught but his pyjamas, and he can't help the way his eyebrows go up at Mycroft's obvious and sentimental concern for him. Sherlock vaguely wishes he had enough energy to make a snide comment about the two pounds Mycroft seems to have put on since the last time Sherlock saw him, but he doesn’t, so he settles for a glare, because he doesn't like when Mycroft is so obvious in his worry, and he doesn't like what that obviousness portends. 

The oxygen mask probably ruins the glare a bit.

Sherlock is still in a lot of pain, but he’s aware enough this time to begin to notice things. Little things. Things like how worrisome the lack of John and John’s relief at his side are, and the expression on Mycroft’s face that he hasn’t seen since their father died. Things like the direction his hospital room faces (North by slightly Northeast), and the discomfort Mycroft is in, mostly through his neck and shoulders, indicating just how long he’s been sat in that chair, indicating just how much he’s been allowing his posture to relax into slouching, all further signs of his sentiment. He notices the path the nurses take around his bed when they come in to check on him, and how often that happens, and that he’s the only one in this room, despite it being a room meant for more than one patient.

Mycroft, seeing that he’s awake, stands, straightening his waistcoat in an extra fastidious manner so as to hide the relief in his eyes. 

“John is alive,” he says, with no preamble. They both know that John is the first and last of Sherlock’s concerns, and that John’s absence at Sherlock’s side will lead him quite quickly to the worst of thoughts, and thence to struggling and pulling out of IVs and probably doing further damage to himself in his quest to be at John’s side _right bloody now_.

Sherlock gives a half sigh that makes his chest hurt. Ribs bruised at the very least, if not cracked. “Where?” he manages to croak.

“He’s two floors down in the neurology ward.” Mycroft holds up a hand to forestall Sherlock speaking and continues, “The accident caused some swelling in his brain, and the doctors have induced a coma for a few days. The swelling has already greatly decreased, and they anticipate a full recovery. They’ll be allowing him to come out of it in another day or two. Unfortunately, there’s no way to determine if there is any lasting... effect on him until after he’s regained consciousness.”

Sherlock sighs. He knows what Mycroft is trying to say, that there’s no way to tell if there’s been any brain damage or if this so-called accident has damaged his peculiar abilities. 

The absence of John at his side is troubling. It’s more than troubling, it’s _devastating_. It’s been so long since he and John were truly parted for any amount of time, and it leaves a part of him, the part that remembers curling up next to John’s heart (and that part has grown over the time they’ve been bound to one another) quaking in abject terror.

He tries to be rational about it, and manages to nod at Mycroft, though internally he’s gasping and nearly sobbing that he can’t see John, see his injuries and deduce for himself their extent and their severity. He’s barely strong enough to shift about in the bed, and everything hurts, but all he wants is to be at John’s side, even if he has to crawl there.

Mycroft steps up to the side of the bed. “Sherlock.”

Sherlock glares up at his brother.

“Please, stay here and rest. The nurses will give you updates on John’s condition, I’ve already spoken with them about this. They know you’re entitled, and have agreed to facilitate the exchange of information. There’s no way to have you moved right now, and he cannot leave the care of his doctors. Don’t do anything stupid. You’ll be able to see him in a day or two.”

Sherlock keeps glaring and doesn’t bother to reply.

Mycroft sighs, knowing a lost cause when he sees one. “Try not to rip any of your stitches, Sherlock.”

\----

The nurses do give him regular updates of John’s condition, although they don’t seem to understand why, for the most part. Mycroft probably only informed the head nurse that John is Sherlock’s spouse, that Sherlock _is_ next of kin and has medical authority for John. 

Most of the updates consist of “resting comfortably, no changes just yet.” At least one of the nurses seems to understand that the updates make it so Sherlock can rest a little bit easier, even if she doesn’t quite understand why. None of them do, not really. No one does, no one can.

He’s not quite capable of getting out of bed. Yet. The first time he tries, he doesn’t make it a single step before his ankle gives out beneath him and he ends up in a heap on the floor, the machines screaming behind him, nurses rushing in and clucking at him like so many hens, hauling him up by his arms and depositing him right back in bed while he glares at all and sundry.

The doctor comes in later on rounds and looks at his ankle, pronounces it to be a relatively minor sprain, and tells him to be more careful getting out of bed next time with a chuckle at his own poor joke. The nurse returns and wraps his ankle, and they make him get out of bed again later that day and walk around a bit, with a cane.

His strength is returning. Part of his issue, part of the reason he was out of it for so long, considering how minor his injuries are, is that it had been the end of a case, and he hadn’t slept in nearly a week, too high on the puzzle to give in to his body’s demands. When he was rendered unconscious in the collision, his traitorous transport simply took the opportunity to keep him that way for a while so he could recover, in more ways than one.

The nurse tells him that he was lucky to get away with such minor cuts and abrasions, along with the bruised and cracked ribs, and the dislocated shoulder. Sherlock knows that if he was lucky, it was most likely down to John throwing himself on top of Sherlock when it happened. He doesn’t really remember the accident, but he’s pretty sure that’s exactly what happened. Because that’s what John does, he throws himself between danger and Sherlock. He always has, and nothing Sherlock has ever done has convinced him it isn’t a good idea. 

And now John is paying the price for it. 

It’s so stupid; a fucking traffic collision. No one’s fault but the weather’s and over zealous drivers.

Something is still missing though, and Sherlock spends a lot of time that first day and a half avoiding thinking about what it is, avoiding it so hard that he gives himself a headache with the effort of not worrying about it. The lack of John in his head is terrifying, and the fact that he can’t feel what any of the people around him are feeling because of that lack is equally terrifying, although for a while it’s rather a relief to only understand intellectually that his nurse is having torrid affairs with both another man and a woman instead of feeling every minute detail of her motivations and feelings on the matter.

He gives up his pretense of being a good patient, as well as that of trying not to need to see John _right now_ when the nurse reports that John has been weaned off the drugs keeping him unconscious. When she’s gone, Sherlock carefully removes his IVs and gets out of bed. He wraps his dressing gown around himself tightly (brought to him yesterday along with a change of pyjamas for himself and for John by Mrs Hudson. She’d brought a huge bouquet for John as well, a riot of wildflowers. She’d said that it made her think of him, and Sherlock had smiled. She hadn’t brought him flowers, but she understands that he cannot abide that sort of display of sentiment. She’d smiled down at him before she left, though, and kissed his brow, and Sherlock had looked away in haste). He checks the corridor surreptitiously for nurses and, seeing none, he carefully makes his way to the lifts. 

Somehow, Sherlock manages to get to John’s room without being caught, and without falling, and without ripping any of his stitches out. 

John looks small in the hospital bed, hooked up to several different beeping machines and monitors, his lashes dark against his too pale cheeks. Sherlock shuffles across the room and sinks into the chair next to John’s bed. There hasn’t been anyone in to see him other than Mrs Hudson. Her bouquet is next to his bed, where he’ll see it when he wakes--if he can see past all the monitors, that is. There are a few others with it, from Greg and his team at the Met, from Mycroft, from the other doctors at the surgery where he still sometimes works. John is well-liked, and he appreciates these little gestures.

“I wish you didn’t insist upon protecting me in such disastrous ways, John,” Sherlock murmurs. He is weary now, his body still recovering from both the case itself and its aftermath. It’s late enough that John probably won’t be checked on again for several hours, so Sherlock carefully climbs into the too narrow hospital bed with him, arranging himself around and on John, resting his head on John’s hip, listening to his slow, even breaths, and dropping into sleep while he waits for John to wake up.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2: John

The first thing John is aware of is the quiet. It is eerily quiet in his head, there is no input from any of his senses, not even from his peculiar ones. None that he’s aware of, anyway. It’s almost like he’s trapped, except he doesn’t _feel_ trapped. He feels warm and safe and content. He’s not sure how he knows that he’s in his own head, but he’s okay with that, because it feels so safe there, especially with no one else around, warm and cozy. For a brief moment, he wonders if maybe that should concern him, that lack of input, but concern seems a long way away here. 

For a while, he floats on that quiet, because it is calm and warm and it holds him and wraps around him and comforts him. It is peaceful, this quiet. There’s nothing to worry about, nothing to deal with, no one to intrude on his quiet. It doesn’t sting, it doesn’t poke at him with the problems of other people, their emotions and their lives. He doesn’t have to care about everyone and everything, and that is bliss. It feels as though a great responsibility, a heavy weight, has been lifted off his shoulders, and it makes it that much easier to float contentedly on the quiet in his mind. 

Eventually, he notices that the quiet is receding, little by little, like the tides. 

They’d spent a week by the sea with Gran, he and Harry, when they were both young. He remembers being fascinated by the tides, sitting and watching the waves for hours, trying to pick out when the tide turned, when it changed, each little increment. He’d never figured it out. 

Just like on that trip, he doesn’t really figure out when things from outside his head start filtering in again; only that he’s slowly becoming aware of sounds around him, of someone talking to him, always talking. Just as slowly, he becomes aware of brightness above and around him, and then of the feel of the sheets under his hands, against his legs, and then of the smell. It feels a little like lying in a bath as the water drains, only much, much slower. Gradually, his body becomes heavier as the quiet recedes, more real, more solid, as the sounds and the smells and the brightness seep in around him, filling him out, pulling him back towards reality.

_Hospital_ , John thinks.

He opens his eyes.

Sherlock is stood next to him, clutching his hand in both of Sherlock’s larger ones, looking absolutely as gobsmacked as John has ever seen him, including that time at that pool, and John’s whole arm hurts.

John has no idea how Sherlock feels. Well, that’s not entirely true. He can _see_ how Sherlock feels, he can observe it; there is concern written across his face, and worry coloring his eyes troubled and stormy. Despite the fact that they’re holding hands--John realizes his grip on Sherlock is just as tight as Sherlock’s grip on him--there’s nothing else there. He doesn’t feel it the way he normally does, like it is his own.

That’s not right.

Things go sort of bright and spangled for a while after that, and he loses track of Sherlock, of his surroundings, of everything.

When John comes back to himself again, Sherlock is still at his side, and he looks terrified, almost shell-shocked. John thinks the doctors must have been and gone, because the light is different in the room, but he’s not sure how much time has passed since he first woke up. John tries to smile an apology at Sherlock, and watches as he tries to wipe his face free of expression, only mostly succeeding.

John’s so tired, and everything hurts. He just wants to go home, and curl up in bed, and sleep for as long as his body will allow.

“Sit,” John croaks, because Sherlock looks like he’s about to fall over, and John’s default mode is ‘taking care of Sherlock’ even when he’s laid up in hospital and doesn’t remember what day it is or how he got here. His voice is all but gone and Sherlock, instead of obeying, grabs a glass of water from the table next to the bed and helps John take a sip.

“Thanks,” John says. His voice is a little improved.

Sherlock nods and sits. The chair is as close to the bed as he can make it without actually climbing into bed with John. John thinks that probably Sherlock started out in bed with him, until the nurses caught him and read him the riot act.

He’s surprised Sherlock listened to them.

Mycroft probably had something to do with that.

“What happened?” John asks, lowering his voice to a whisper, because his throat still hurts. In fact, everything still hurts. Has he mentioned that yet? Everything. Hurts.

“Traffic collision,” Sherlock replies. “You did something stupid and heroic, I’m sure.”

“You don’t know?”

“I can deduce.”

John raises one eyebrow, and Sherlock cracks a tiny smile.

“I think I’ll sleep now.”

“John--”

“Later,” John says. They’ll talk about it later. 

Sherlock nods, reluctant. It’s obvious he wants to talk about this now, but he acquiesces to John, because he’s not well. For once, John seems to be getting the last word. If he felt any better than he does, he would crow about that. He would make sure every nurse on the ward understands that Sherlock Holmes let John Watson have the last word; he figures they’ll be able to surmise on their own how momentous that is, just from having to deal with Sherlock while he was still unconscious. He would call Mycroft about it, and Greg, and Mrs Hudson, and possibly even his sister. 

But he feels awful, so he lets it go for now.

“Stay close?”

“Of course, John. Don’t be stupid.”

John smiles, and drifts off hoping Sherlock stops worrying so much.

\----

When John wakes up again--wakes up or regains consciousness, and he knows which he’d prefer it to be as well as he knows which it really is-- the room is that almost dark that only happens in hospitals, and there is a warm weight over his legs and against his hip, and Sherlock’s hair is between his fingers, all of which ache with a strange, intense peculiarity that he doesn’t want to think about. 

John removes his hand from its resting spot on Sherlock’s head, and Sherlock doesn’t react except with a small sigh. Asleep, then. John holds up his hand in front of his face and looks at it. As his heart thumps in his chest, reassuring and steady, the ache fades from his fingers, draining away with each heartbeat. Slowly, he cards his fingers through Sherlock’s hair again, and the ache starts up immediately when his fingers encounter Sherlock’s skin. It starts slow, and starts to build as his fingers remain in contact with Sherlock’s skin.

_Shit, that can’t be good._ He puts his hand down on Sherlock’s shoulder instead, covered in t-shirt and dressing gown, and the ache doesn’t return.

He’s too tired to think about it much. His head is aching, along with most of the rest of his body, and he doesn’t want to think about what this means. He doesn’t want to think about any of it. 

So he doesn’t. John lets his body’s overwhelming need to recover take over, and he slips back under quickly and quietly, his hand still on Sherlock’s shoulder.

\----

The doctors descend upon him the next morning, and it feels like half the staff of the hospital is in his room at one point or another, asking the same questions over and over and over again, the same questions, the same words, the same assurances and reassurances and platitudes, and no real answers. No telling him when he can go home. No one mentions his peculiarities, which is all the confirmation John needs that Mycroft didn’t intercede in time to get him to one of his secluded, private hospitals. Regular old NHS, this time around. John’s not sure which he prefers. He’s not sure the doctors like Stapleton would be any more help than the normal sort of doctors right now. He’s not sure he wants to know.

John can barely differentiate between the doctors and nurses. He can see that they’re different people, he understands that they’re different people, but there’s none of the emotional cues or the sort of internal flavors he associates with people there to help him tell them all apart, and they blur together. They all seem the _same_ to him. They’re all blank, empty. He can’t feel anything from them, and it’s terrifying. John doesn’t want to contemplate it, but it’s staring him in the face. He feels like he’s only half seeing people, like they’re shadows of themselves and he can’t see them clearly.

He can hear their words, and he can hear that there is emotion there. He knows that these are people, regular people, and this is how almost everyone goes through life. But he can’t differentiate what is the normal meaningless sort of platitude that doctors and nurses use to keep patients calm and in line, and what they actually mean.

It’s awful. He’s woken up with one of his senses missing, and he can’t say anything to any of them about it. He can’t grieve the loss, he can’t even admit to it out loud because they’d section him immediately. All he can do is stare at Sherlock, the only one who seems real, stare and try to convey how much it hurts, how he feels like half of him is missing, without his empathy, without Sherlock in his head.

Sherlock sits at his side the whole time, his hand on John’s arm. It aches, but John doesn’t say anything. He needs that, right now. John needs the ache to remind him that this is reality, to keep him grounded, to keep him present and listening instead of disappearing in his own head, trying to force his empathy back on-line.

Because he knows he can’t handle this. This will destroy him.

John doesn’t know who he is without his peculiarity.

\----

It hurts when anyone touches him, but most of all when Sherlock does so.

And Sherlock touches him constantly. He seems to need the reassurance of that contact, especially since John can’t feel Sherlock in his head, and he imagines that goes both ways. It’s been a long time since the pool, and they’ve been through an awful lot since then. They’re closer than ever, and that mental link between them is a large part of why.

And now it’s gone. John doesn’t know what to do, how to fix that. It’s too much to even contemplate, it leaves him veering dangerously close to panic whenever he even tries.

Sherlock is the only person here who seems real, and John clings to it, to that reality. The rest of the--all the doctors and nurses, everyone else--are blank, mannequins with voices, coming and going, giving him instructions and running tests and taking blood and sticking him in machines and telling him things, spouting platitudes and prognoses.

Sherlock is the only who feels real, and John feels small and entirely alone for possibly the first time in his life.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, I was going to wait until tomorrow to post these two chapters, but I decided not to. Also, I have to be at work at six tomorrow morning, and I'll probably be totally wiped out afterwards. 
> 
> Good news: free time Friday and Saturday, and hopefully some Sunday afternoon/evening, so hopefully I can get some more writing done towards the ending of this sucker. 
> 
> Well, not the very last chapter. That's pretty much already written. Would you like a hint or would that be spoilers?

John seems lost, swallowed up in the hospital bed that seems only marginally bigger than he is. Sherlock watches as he quietly listens to the doctors and nods along; he doesn’t seem to absorb any of the information they’re giving him, any of their prognoses. John quietly and with more patience than Sherlock would expect submits to the tests they want to do. It’s his expression that’s the worst though, one of constant confusion and pain. It never seems to go away entirely, even when he’s asleep, and Sherlock hates it.

He hates that he can’t help John the way he’s used to. He keeps reaching for the connection that should be there, and feeling--not quite nothing, but not what he should be feeling. It feels suppressed, dampened, buried under two tons of rubble. He can’t feel things at John, though, and that’s the important thing, the terrifying thing. He’s so used to John in his head that he doesn’t know what it’s going to be like without him there, without his constant presence and its comfort. He can’t make a difference to the way John feels the normal way. He can’t soothe John with a hand wrapped around the back of his neck the way he wants to. He can barely manage to curl up sort of beside John in the bed when he thinks they’ll be left alone for a few hours and revel in some small semblance of the closeness they’ve both become used to.

For the love of all things holy, they just got married, barely two weeks ago. And now this. He should’ve listened to John. They should’ve gone on honeymoon instead of postponing it.

Sherlock is useless, completely helpless right now, and he hates it. It makes him miserable, and angry.

Sherlock is never at his best when he feels useless, and he knows it as well as John. He knows he takes things out on the people around him, even the ones he cares about (ie, John). For John’s sake though, he tries to keep his snarling at the nurses and doctors to a bare minimum, no matter how certain he is that it would make him feel better.

John must notice the effort he’s putting in, because more than once, he raises an eyebrow at Sherlock, as though asking “is that all?” without words. Sherlock is rather proud of his restraint, actually. And if the smiles he starts coaxing out of John with it are any indication, it helps, at least a little. It gives John some small relief from the maelstrom of his own emotions that he must be dealing with. It restores some semblance of normality to the situation.

John’s empathy is off-line right now, and Sherlock knows he must be terrified, and feel more than half-blind. Sherlock wants to ask him a million questions, he wants to run experiments (he _always_ wants to run experiments on John. [Often on his body]). He wants to turn his mind to this problem and _fix it_. He wants to fix John. He wants to make John feel like himself again, he wants to make John happy again. 

John doesn’t seem to want this. 

Rather, John doesn’t seem to want to discuss it right now. He doesn’t want to hear Sherlock’s plans, or his theories. Sherlock doesn’t quite understand why, they’re often left alone in his room. It has remained a private room even after John woke up and Sherlock took up residence at his side; he knows this is Mycroft’s doing.

He tries not to bring it up too often, but it’s on the tip of his tongue all the time. He wants to be _doing_ something. Sherlock cannot stand this enforced idleness, this lack of action, this stagnation.

And he sees that John is struggling with the doctors and nurses. John sees them, but he doesn’t seem to be able to keep them in his head. He doesn’t remember them, he doesn’t seem to be able to keep them all straight. So Sherlock decides to do what he can to help. It’s only logical. Rational. It’s something, anyway.

Sherlock has always enjoyed dazzling John with his deductions. So he starts keeping track of the different doctors and nurses (none of them matter to him except in their capacity to keep John captive or set him free) and he tells John about them. It helps him keep his mind from atrophying, from turning inward and devouring itself, during the hours upon hours spent sat in John’s room, at John’s side, doing nothing.

“She’s trying to get pregnant,” he observes about the night nurse. “And she thinks you’re a model patient, for a doctor. Pleasantly surprised is, I think, her general reaction.”

John looks at him sharply. The woman had been barely out of the room before Sherlock started speaking. He keeps going, detailing her routine and her preferred work-drink and, “she’ll be back before you fall asleep, she always checks in on you.”

“Sherlock!” he exclaims. 

“What? You’ll remember which one she is now, will you not?” 

After a long moment of staring, as if John is trying to see into Sherlock’s head by sheer force of will, John sighs. “It might help.”

He doesn’t seem pleased, but neither does he seem angry or disappointed. Sherlock hopes that it’s just frustration with his lack of empathy, and not something more sinister. John won’t let this become a reason to leave, will he? Now that he possibly can get away from Sherlock on a permanent basis?

“Good.” Sherlock doesn’t voice his resurgent fears, but he does scoot his chair another inch or two closer to John’s bed.

“I’m not going to be able to discourage you from deducing the whole staff of the ward, am I?”

“Not even a little, John.” He tries for a lofty tone, but he’s not sure he manages it.

John sighs again. Sherlock smiles at him a little and reaches out to touch him. He likes the comfort of physical contact, especially now, with the connection between them somewhere between disabled and severed. 

John flinches. He catches himself almost immediately, but Sherlock has already seen, and he draws his hand back. “There’s something you’re not telling me, John.”

“We’ll talk about it later, Sherlock.”

“We will talk about this now, John,” Sherlock insists.

John stares at him. Sherlock stares back, willing John to break the gaze, willing him to back down first. John doesn’t.

“No. We won’t.”

Sherlock sighs and folds his hands together in his lap and stares at them very hard. “Don’t shut me out, John. Please.” His voice comes out soft, like it always does when he has to voice things like this, things that are emotional in nature. 

John at least looks chagrined. “I just-- I can’t right now, Sherlock. I can’t wrap my head around this yet. Do you see?”

Sherlock just looks at him. He may be able to see that John is struggling and scared, but that doesn’t mean he has to deal with things alone. That’s why Sherlock is around. That’s one of the perks of being stuck with one another, isn’t it?

“We can discuss it later,” Sherlock concedes. But he doesn’t like it, not one bit. It hurts, it feels as though John is shutting him out, keeping him at a distance in a way he never has before. John knows that Sherlock will help him however he needs, doesn’t he? He should be aware; they’ve talked about this before. They’ve agreed to talk about things, even though it’s hard for both of them.

About two days after John regains consciousness, one day after the discharge nurse has given up trying to get Sherlock to submit to a final exam and instructions and just had his discharge papers delivered to him in John’s room, Sherlock starts getting texts. The first is from Lestrade.

‘How’s John doing? Tell him we’re all glad he’s not dead. GL’

Sherlock looks up from the text at John. “Why is Lestrade texting me to tell you things?”

John rolls his eyes. “Because I’m in hospital, Sherlock. And because you’ve had your phone surgically grafted to your hand, so he knows you’ll get the message and relay it to me. What’d he say?”

“He says ‘Tell him we’re all glad he’s not dead,’ and inquires after your health.” Sherlock scowls at his phone, but when he looks up again, John is smiling, just a little bit.

“Tell him I said ta and I’ll be fine once they let me go home and sleep in my own bed. Please.”

John seems happy that someone else is concerned about him, so Sherlock obeys, though he hates being the messenger. He vows to acquire a new phone for John at the earliest possible moment.

The next message that pings in, hours later, disturbing John’s nap and Sherlock’s watching of Connie Prince repeats on telly, is from Mycroft, and Sherlock groans.

John chuckles sleepily and blinks at him. “Mycroft, then. What’s he say?”

Sherlock grumbles but opens the message instead of deleting it like he wants to. It probably is for John, after all. Mycroft is only sending it to Sherlock because of the added bonus of being annoying. And possibly because John’s phone was destroyed in the crash.

“He says you should be released soon, as the doctors haven’t been able to find anything further wrong with you and you don’t have TBI, it was basically a glorified concussion. Only he said it in his usual pompous windbag sort of way.” Sherlock deletes the text and tosses the phone on the bed next to John. 

John smiles at him. “They’ll let me go when they let me go, Sherlock. You could go home, if you like. I wouldn’t mind.”

There’s a hesitation there, a slight hitch in his voice, Sherlock hears it. John doesn’t want to be left alone, but he doesn’t want to admit it either. He doesn’t want to ask for help even though he needs it.

“No, I’ll stay, John.” Sherlock says it offhand, as though it isn’t a big deal, as though John isn’t probably feeling immense relief at this.

John smiles at him, just a little.

Sherlock knows this is going to be hard on both of them, hard for them to get through. But he’s going to do his damnedest to solve this puzzle, to help John through this, help them both through this so things can get back to normal.


	4. Chapter 4

John really hates being in hospital. Really hates it as he hates few other things in life. For a few minutes at a time, when he allows himself, that hatred burns raw and bright inside him, and he’s warm. After that it usually sputters out and he’s left exhausted again; he slumps back into the discomfort of the hospital bed and lets his exhaustion overcome him. He is so easily exhausted right now, and he knows _why_ but he still hates it, hates the frailty of his own body.

He has too many bad memories associated with hospitals--which is ironic for a doctor--starting with the time his Gran spent in hospital and then hospice care, at the end of her life, moving on to his own worst stint, recovering from being shot in Afghanistan, and on down to sitting at Sherlock’s side in that private hospital waiting for him to wake after the incident at the pool. He even, to a certain extent, considers his time in Baskerville as time served in hospital. That hadn’t been a hospital per se, but it had felt like one at times. Most of the time. Until Sherlock had shown up, anyway. It was more clinical than most hospitals, but it was still an institution of sorts. The further away from his time spent there he gets, the more it bothers him that he’d done it. The more Stapleton’s strange fascination with him bugs him.

John can’t feel anything except his own emotions, and he doesn’t want to deal with those at this particular juncture. He doesn’t remember a time when the emotions of other people weren’t in his head, and he feels blind, ignorant of everything going on around him as he never has been before. And his Gran had told him, once or twice, towards the end when she was trying to impart all the wisdom she had left--and it was considerable--she’d told him that he’d manifested even younger than his mother, that he’d been empathic from a scarily young age, and how hard it had been for her and his mother both to deal with.

John really just wants to go home. He doesn’t feel like that’s even too much to ask, after the first couple of days, when he’s caught up on sleep and his breathing is coming easier, when he isn’t exhausted by simply sitting in bed. It shouldn’t be too much to ask at all. He’s seen all of his test results. Other than the induced coma and the swelling--yanno, no big deal, really--he’s fine. 

Well other than those two things and the sprained wrist, the bruising all down the left side of his body, and the set of cracked ribs that almost perfectly mirror Sherlock’s, he’s fine.

It’s nothing, really. 

He just wants to go home. 

He wants to go home and sleep in his own bed, and run after Sherlock, and solve cases together, and get back to his life, his real life.

Nothing here feels real. 

John doesn’t feel real.

The only real thing is Sherlock, and he clings to Sherlock as much as he can. Which isn’t much, since touching Sherlock right now makes him ache.

He hasn’t been able to bring himself to admit to Sherlock that his touch hurts right now. He doesn’t want to see the look that Sherlock will get when he admits to it. He doesn’t want to know how that makes Sherlock feel, although he’s pretty sure he already knows, because he feels the same way. He does know that not being able to feel it with Sherlock won’t stop him from feeling it, not in this case. John knows Sherlock too well, they’ve been together for too long, they’ve been connected for too long. He knows what the knowledge will do to him.

Sherlock will hate it. It will devastate him, to know that when he touches John, when John touches him, it makes John ache, starting with whatever bit of skin is touching Sherlock’s, and radiating out from there.

It starts slower when there’s a barrier between them, a shirt or two. But it still starts eventually, and it still spreads out through John’s body, and though it’s a slower process, it still radiates outward and gets gradually worse.

John can’t stand it. All he really wants to do is wrap himself up in Sherlock, in his bond-mate, in his husband, and wait out this strangeness, wait until his empathy comes back, wait until things go back to normal.

But he can’t.

They should have gone on honeymoon. They could be on an island somewhere in the Mediterranean. Or at the very least in Sussex.

He doesn’t want to contemplate what he’ll do if his peculiarity never comes back. Even more than that, he doesn’t want to think about what it will mean for him and Sherlock, if they can’t touch each other anymore.

It would destroy him. It would destroy _them_. 

He wonders if Sherlock has figured it out yet. He knows that Sherlock saw him flinch, that one time. He’s managed not to do it again, but John knows that must have hurt, and he feels awful that he couldn’t stop himself, a dull ache deep in his chest that he can’t seem to dismiss. Because he knows Sherlock needs him right now. Needs him to be strong and needs the comfort of being near John.

John needs Sherlock near as well, He needs the comfort of Sherlock’s presence, in his mind and in his heart, and he doesn’t want to make do with just his physical presence. 

He feels Sherlock’s absence like a hole in his body. Even beyond the ache that comes when they touch, he feels that absence in his head, in his whole body, deep in his bones. Everything of him is yearning towards Sherlock, yearning for his presence and his prickly emotions and his rationality and for the buzzing of bees that has never really gone away. He misses the buzzing of the bees.

\----

When John wakes up from his afternoon nap, Sherlock and Mycroft are on opposite sides of his bed, glaring at each other. There’s some sort of silent conversation going on, one that John isn’t privy to. 

Nor does he want to be, not really. His body aches and his mind is a blank and he does not want to deal with the elder Holmes and his autocratic ways. Mycroft’s presence does not bode well for his chances at going home sooner as opposed to later, and he doesn’t want to deal with any of this right now.

Sherlock notices that John is awake first, and breaks eye contact with his brother, looking down at John and then taking his seat at John’s side, scooting the chair as close to the bed as possible and placing his hand near John’s on top of the blankets.

“Nice of you to drop by, Mycroft, now please go away,” Sherlock says, with an air of finality about him. He turns his gaze from his brother, dismissing him completely.

John snorts at almost the same time as Mycroft, and then looks up at him in surprise. Mycroft raises one elegant, arrogant eyebrow and then takes the seat that has magically appeared on his side of the bed. The seat that hadn’t been there before John fell asleep.

Sherlock stares at both of them, then scowls momentarily, before his expression descends into a pout. John reaches across the rail to pat Sherlock on the shoulder, and Sherlock snatches his hand off the blankets near John’s and slumps down, crossing his arms. John just smiles at him, then turns his attention to Mycroft.

“Why are you here, anyway? I mean, thank you for coming, of course, but why?”

Mycroft gives him a tight, uncomfortable smile. “Gregory wished me to convey his wishes for your speedy recovery.”

John raises his brows. “I got the text he sent Sherlock.”

“He wasn’t positive Sherlock had conveyed his sentiments.”

John turns to glare at Sherlock. “You were supposed to text him back.”

“I _did_ text him back.”

Mycroft just looks smug at his younger brother. Sherlock makes a sound of utmost disgust.

John sighs. He just loves being between the two Holmes brothers when they’re picking at each other. Which is to say, always.

“There was something I wished to discuss with you as well, John.”

_Oh, that doesn’t sound ominous,_ John thinks. “Oh?”

“I understand that you are having... difficulties, currently, with your... other senses?”

John gives a tight nod. He already doesn’t like where this is going.

“Might I suggest--”

“Forget it, Mycroft,” Sherlock interrupts in a hiss. “He’s due to be discharged today.”

“I only meant--”

“You only want to get your grubby hands on him again!”

John reaches out to Sherlock again, wanting to calm him before he has the whole nursing staff piling into the room to break things up. Putting a hand on his shoulder makes John’s whole hand ache within a few moments, but it calms Sherlock down, marginally. Enough to get him to sit back in the chair and cross his arms again.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea right now, Mycroft,” John says by way of an apology. “I really just want to go home.”

“But you’ve no idea--”

“And your doctors aren’t going to be able to tell me anymore than I can tell on my own, are they? Not even Stapleton.”

“They might.”

“No, Mycroft.” John says it gently, because even if he can’t feel it, he knows Mycroft’s fascination with his peculiarities and his desire to dissect them, and his disappointment that John isn’t acquiescing to his desires.

Mycroft sighs, as if he’d known this would be the outcome but had to try anyway. “Dr Stapleton would love to follow up with you, John. Although she’s been off on holiday for a few weeks, so it wouldn’t have been her anyway.” He makes a dismissive gesture. “I’ll let Gregory know that you’re recuperating well, shall I?”

John nods. “Please.”

Mycroft returns the nod and stands, gathering his coat and his umbrella. “See you soon, John, Sherlock.”

Sherlock unclenches a bit after his brother is gone. “I don’t want you going back to that place, John.”

“Don’t worry, Sherlock. There’s very little chance of that happening.”

Sherlock seems to relax a bit at the reassurance, and John wishes, not for the first time that day, that things were normal between them. That he could feel Sherlock in his head, could reach out to him mentally. He’s incredibly uncomfortable with the way things are now; he doesn’t know what anyone is feeling, he can’t read people. That would probably be ok, or at least not as terrifying as it is, if he could at least connect with Sherlock.

But he doesn’t even have that, and that might be the worst torture he can imagine right now.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> These two chapters are pretty in-between or interlude-y or something like that. A bit shorter, too.

Sherlock keeps copious notes on his cases, and sometimes they perhaps veer into a way to get a few of the excess thoughts out of his head--but don’t ever call it a journal because he’s Sherlock Holmes and he does not go in for that sort of excessively emotional waste of time. 

There are things he can’t get out of his head, thoughts that swirl like a vortex, sucking his reason into the maelstrom, making it impossible to sort things out, since waking up in hospital. Since discovering that John is off-line. Since John gently broke it to him that every time Sherlock touches him it actually causes him physical pain, an ache that spreads the longer they are in contact, and could Sherlock maybe try to keep that to a bare minimum? Just for now. Just until they figure things out. John had looked sick when he’d asked for it, legitimately green around the edges. He hadn’t been able to make eye contact. He’d reached abortively for Sherlock, stopped, reached again, over and over, until Sherlock had grabbed him by the hand just to stop his twitching.

And John had winced. He had met Sherlock’s eyes, and Sherlock observed. He saw the pain that John felt, he saw the terror and the worry. He saw everything that John wasn’t saying out loud.

Sherlock had gone for a long walk after that. He’d left the hospital entirely and walked for a long time, in no particular direction, though he knew precisely where he was at all times. He veered into some of the old, familiar neighborhoods, old haunts.

He’d nearly stopped in somewhere and bought himself a ridiculous amount of cocaine on the way back to the hospital. It was sorely tempting, just to make things not hurt so much for a while. The temptation will always be there.

He hadn’t given in. He’s proud of that.

From the look John gave him when he returned to his side late that night, he thinks John might be proud of him as well. He’s not sure how John had known what he’d been thinking without their connection, but John had known. Perhaps he’s picked up even more of Sherlock’s methods than Sherlock though and had been able to deduce it.

He hasn’t had a full night’s rest since John was discharged. (He hadn’t really had a good night’s sleep while John was still in hospital either.)

He hasn’t had a full night’s rest _to his own personal standards_ since John was discharged (he probably hasn’t had a full night’s rest to John’s standards _ever_ ). Which means he’s slept less than three hours a night. Which is, from the way John scowls at him after he insists Sherlock tell him how much sleep he’s had in the past few days, more than a bit Not Good.

Sherlock cannot stop thinking. He can’t keep his thoughts from circling and circling, in ever tighter circles, around the problem at hand. The vortex is swirling ever faster, and he can’t seem to turn his thoughts to anything else, not the work, not experiments, not anything.

The thoughts burn in his mind until he wants to tear his own hair out in frustration.

So he writes them down in hope of that helping. He does so under cover of darkness, lest John think this is something to be encouraged, or shared between them. John is the writer, Sherlock only does this to siphon the thoughts from his head when they grow too heavy to bear, when they refuse to be categorized and sorted, when they spin too fast for him to grasp and filter into their proper places in his mind palace.

He has a notebook (or three) dedicated to his notes on John, and he writes these thoughts down in there, because they are to do with John, and with John and Sherlock as an entity. To do with their connection, that psychic link between them.

It’s not until he looks back on those notes later, reviewing them to make sure they capture his thoughts precisely--because there’s no point in thinking if one cannot be precise, and even less point in recording one’s thoughts if the recording lacks precision--that he realizes that he’d written the thoughts down like a list, written them down as though he was speaking to John.

He can’t really say these things to John. John has enough on his plate right now, with the way he’s still feeling, with his lack of empathy, with the way his other peculiarity seems to be in overdrive. 

Sherlock cannot imagine how John must be feeling right now.

He hates it.


	6. Chapter 6

John isn’t sleeping well. 

This is never a particularly good thing, but it’s even less good than usual now, when he’s trying to recover from a brain injury, and his body spends most of each day reminding him how fragile it is and how exhausted it is and how much everything hurts it.

And yet, his sleep doesn’t feel restful. It doesn’t feel like he’s recovering at all; it feels like he’s further and further away from well.

It doesn’t help that John no longer sleeps very well when Sherlock isn’t in the bed with him. Sherlock knows this, has known for a while now. They both know this. They’ve reached a compromise over it. Sherlock doesn’t have to sleep when John sleeps, but he tries to spend most of the hours of the night that John needs him there next to John in their bed. He does his thinking then, he plans experiments. He writes up notes on cases, or he reads.

More than once, this has led to John being woken in the small hours when Sherlock reaches the successful solution to a puzzle and drags John off with him to apprehend a criminal. Or find some pigs’ feet, in one case.

That makes John happy. Or it did, anyway. 

Sherlock hasn’t taken any new cases since they came home from hospital, and he’s clearly getting antsy with the prolonged down time. Well, prolonged for Sherlock. So far he’s avoided descending into a black mood, but John suspects that’s because he’s been busying himself with trying to solve John. 

John doesn’t have the heart to tell him it’s most likely a matter of time, and waiting, and letting his body and his brain heal. Sherlock is so determined to come up with the right combination of rest and proper food--it’s more attention than John has ever seen Sherlock give to food, ever--that John can’t bring himself to discourage his theories. He can’t bring himself to tell Sherlock what concussion and swelling do to the brain, and that he mostly just needs to take it easy for a while, and for the love of all things good and right in the world, make sure that he doesn’t get knocked upside the head again anytime soon.

There’s also the possibility it’s permanent. He doesn’t want to think that way, though it creeps in on him sometimes, when he least expects it. Sherlock seems to be refusing to think of that possibility at all, with the single-mindedness he brings to any task he deems important enough.

John doesn’t sleep well without Sherlock there next to him in bed, but right now, Sherlock can’t touch John without causing him pain.

And Sherlock has a tendency to cling in his sleep, when he actually sleeps. 

Truth be told, both of them do. They’re used to each other, to reaching for the warmth of another body in bed with them. They’re used to snuggling in close, arms and legs wrapped around each other. Even before things got physical between them, before things got mentally-sexual, they tended to cling when asleep.

They’ve had little success in avoiding this when asleep, now that John can’t be touched.

The first night, they’d gone to bed like normal. John had been dragging, barely keeping his eyes open. He hadn’t even given it much thought, he’d only wanted to sleep, and he’d wanted Sherlock next to him.

“I’ll stay awake,” Sherlock had assured him. “It will be fine, John.”

Sherlock is nothing if not supremely confident in himself. John usually finds it endearing.

Not so much after he wakes in the middle of the night with Sherlock plastered against him and sparks of pain radiating outward from every point of skin-to-skin contact. It had taken him a long time to wake Sherlock up. He’d nearly been in tears by the time he managed it, his voice choked and his brain nearly whited out with the pain.

Neither of them really sleeps the rest of that night. John curls up on his side of the bed, as close to the edge as he can manage while staying in bed, curled up as tightly as he can, his body trembling as the pain slowly fades away. He could feel Sherlock on the other side of the bed, radiating guilt and regret so strongly that John could feel it even without his peculiarity in working condition. Eventually John dozed off again, only to jolt awake again every time Sherlock moves even the tiniest amount, terrified that he’ll be touched again.

\----

Determined, they try again the next night. If asked, John could barely tell you what he’d done that day, what he’d eaten. He knows he didn’t leave the flat. He’s not sure he even managed to take a shower He feels as though everything he does from moving to thinking is done at half-speed, at best. At worst, he’s not moving at all, and the world simply flows past him, barely even noticed, not observed, not noted. Everything is passing him by while he’s sat in the lounge trying to keep his head in the present.

John piles every pillow in the flat between them that night, to try and keep them from each other.

That doesn’t work either.

Sherlock seems ready to tear his own hair out in frustration, and that’s after only two nights.

They keep trying, though. Sherlock contorts himself into all manner of strange configurations, to try to remain in the bed with John and yet far enough away that he won’t attach himself to John, far enough away that he won’t be able to get to John’s skin.

It sort of works, though mostly because Sherlock can’t quite manage to sleep at all like that.

Eventually they stumble onto the idea of using separate blankets. It seems simple, why didn’t either of them think of it earlier?

Sherlock insists that John go to bed as normal, and that he’ll join him soon enough. John reluctantly agrees, though he’s tired and his head is pounding. He doesn’t like Sherlock doing so much for him, especially since he’s recovering from injuries as well.

At this particularly moment, he simply doesn’t have the energy to argue. So he goes to bed, changing into a worn t-shirt and pyjama bottoms and crawling under the covers. He’s on the brink of sleep when Sherlock comes into the room, the sheets and duvet from the upstairs bed bundled into his arms. John watches through increasingly long blinks as Sherlock dumps them on his side of the bed, and changes into pyjamas, and then carefully wraps himself in the covers and flops onto the bed. 

He has to wriggle around a bit to get himself straight, but eventually manages. 

“Good night, John,” John hears him say.

“Good night, Sherlock,” he murmurs back. Or perhaps he only thinks it.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Still not looked at by anyone but me, so feel free to point out SPAG issues. Also, this marks about the halfway point in posting what I've already got written. I still am not quite sure how many more chapters there are going to be. Hopefully I'll suss that out soon.

About a week later, Sherlock wakes up on the floor of their room. He has zero recollection of ending up on the floor. Doesn’t know if he rolled out of bed and somehow managed to sleep through the landing, or if he’d simply given up on trying to sleep next to John without ending up touching him somehow.

None of his body is protesting too much at being on the floor, beyond a slight ache in the hip that rests against the floorboards through the layers of sheets and duvet. There’s a pillow wedged sideways under his head.

Maybe he’d gone to sleep on the floor. Maybe he’d rolled out of bed, and instead of waking him, John had just got up and given him a pillow. Maybe he’d rolled out of bed and had woken up, and just lost the memory to the reoccurrence of sleep.

Sherlock stays on the floor for a few minutes more, gathering himself up to face the day. 

Everything is wrong. 

John still isn’t empathic again. Sherlock starts every day poking at the connection that should be there in his head. It should be there and it should be thrumming between them. He should know without conscious thought where John is and how he feels; he should be able to tell what sort of day it’s going to be for them before he even opens his eyes.

He hates it. 

He hates how much he misses John in his head. He hates that everything feels out of sorts and off balance and unbelievably wrong without John in his head. Without being in John’s head. 

On the few occasions he’s gone far enough into his head, beyond his mind palace to the safe place John had helped him build, he’s found it unchanged. The flat is still there. The walls still drip with honey; they’re still covered in honeycomb. There are still bees buzzing all around, and flowers everywhere. 

There’s still an unfelt breeze ruffling them. 

Everything is the same. 

But the door is shut. The door that lets him into John’s head, the door that opens to a field full of wheat, full of sand, with a great big oak tree and a stone wall, is shut. And try as he might, Sherlock can’t get it to open.

Sherlock kicks the door for good measure. Several times.

It doesn’t make him feel better. So he retreats, and he tries not to think about that, about what it could mean. 

John keeps telling him it takes time. To be patient.

John should know better. The smile he usually wears when he asks for Sherlock’s patience tells Sherlock that he does know better. But he asks nonetheless, because he knows that they really don’t have any choice.

Sherlock knows they don’t have any choice either. And he hates that, too.

Sherlock hates a lot of things these days. His hatreds take up a lot of his time, and much of his energy.

The lingering stiffness in his arm, and the slow healing of his ribs take up a lot of his time and energy as well.

He’s bored out of his skull.

\----

They go for a walk. It’s John’s idea, but Sherlock agrees to it readily enough. John has been antsy the past several days, and yet hesitant to leave the flat, at least on his own. Now, however, he seems eager to do so, eager to get out.

They put on coats and leave the flat, heading across the street and into Regent’s Park, where there are fewer people to jostle and jolt John, to cause him pain. Less tourists than if they were to walk down Baker Street. This suits Sherlock just fine; there are still enough people around to be at least marginally interesting, and he entertains them both for a while as they amble with humourous and outrageous deductions that even manage to draw smiles and a few chuckles from John, who otherwise remains steadfastly blank.

Sherlock knows that the blankness hides melancholy. John’s doing his best to keep moving forward, moving through.

But he knows that John can’t do this on his own. And he knows that he can help. 

If only John would let him. If only John would _talk_ to him, let him in. Say _something_ about it. Anything. Two words.

“Sherlock, help.”

That’s all it would take.

\----

There are low voices coming from the other side of the bedroom door. Sherlock extricates himself from his blanket cocoon and struggles to his feet. Asleep on the floor again. His ankle is aching. He hasn’t been doing the stretching exercises that John wants him to do, and he’s pretty sure that his IT band has been tightening incrementally each day. 

Sherlock hates it.

He doesn’t bother getting dressed. Anyone that would come to visit John, with perhaps the exception of Harry--but when does she ever bother?--has seen Sherlock in his pyjamas before. Chances are it’s just Mrs Hudson fussing anyway, and she’s seen more of Sherlock than that.

He wanders out through the kitchen, yawning and stopping for a cup of coffee, as there’s a fresh-looking pot on the counter, and it’s still early enough in the day to be fairly trustworthy.

Lestrade and John are in the lounge. John is dressed, but he isn’t wearing shoes. It makes Sherlock ache, somewhere deep in his chest, to see John without shoes, as though he’s aware that he won’t be getting dragged out of the flat at a moment’s notice anytime soon.

“Hey,” John says to him with a smile, looking up from his chair. “Greg brought you some cold cases, thought it might cheer you up.”

Sherlock feels his face contort into some sort of expression, but he couldn’t tell you what it was. John smiles again though, and Lestrade chuckles, so it must not be too bad.

“Anyway, I’ve gotta get to the Yard,” Lestrade says, standing up and stretching a bit. “Text me if you figure any of these out Sherlock, yeah?”

Sherlock grunts and wanders over to the pile of folders on the partner’s desk, collapsing into his chair and pulling them towards him.

“We on for tomorrow, John?”

“God, yes,” Sherlock hears him reply. He sounds... excited. Sherlock hates it. He looks up briefly to see Lestrade pat John on the shoulder, with only a hint of awkwardness. Sherlock hates that as well. Other people can touch John without him flinching away in pain, but not Sherlock. Not the person who needs to touch him, who aches with the pain of separation from him. He might grown under his breath as he turns his attention back to the files in front of him. Any distraction in a storm.

Lestrade leaves at some point after that; Sherlock doesn’t notice because he’s reading through the cases. Most of them seem utterly simple on the surface, but it’s something to do. It’s something to keep his brain from utterly atrophying, or from impaling itself too far on the spike of John’s missing empathy.

It’s better than dwelling on his anger, or the other, more murky things he’s feeling that he doesn’t want to think about.


	8. Chapter 8

It takes John a long time to wake up. 

His skin crawls, and he can’t speak around the lump in his throat. There are wet tracks on his face from the tears he thought he was only crying in the dream.

He struggles into a sitting position and leans over, face in hands, elbows on knees, and tries to breathe. 

It’s dark in the room, dark in the flat. This only seems to happen on especially dark nights; or else the way it leaves him feeling makes the night seem especially dark. Either way, John shudders through the memories of the dream, through the way he’d felt all through it, that sickening feeling of love, of adoration. 

Waking, he knows it’s not right, but it had felt right in the middle of it. It had felt like the most right thing in his life, and it leaves his stomach churning and his mind reeling.

After a few minutes, there’s a sound behind him, and John jumps to his feet, whirling around to see Sherlock’s tousled head peeking over the side of the bed. His lungs seem to simply stop working, breathing becomes so difficult.

“I keep waking up on the floor,” Sherlock grumbles. “Why am I waking up on the floor?”

John can’t speak for a few minutes. He can’t hear anything else over the pounding of his own heart, over how startled he’d been to hear Sherlock’s voice.

Sherlock hadn’t been there, in his dream. It was as though he’d never existed. The only people in the world had been John and Sebastian Moran.

“John? What’s wrong?” 

John watches, chest heaving as he struggles not to descend into hyperventilation, as Sherlock flails his way out of his cocoon of blankets and takes two steps across the bed, stopping just short of wrapping John up in a hug. They both notice the gap between them, the one that has to remain between them, and they both frown.

“Deep breaths,” Sherlock orders. 

Dull pain blooms when Sherlock grabs him by the shoulders and whirls him around and pushes him down on the side of the bed. 

“Put your head down, John. Breathe, for the love of god.”

John tries to breathe. He tries to calm the pounding of his heart. He can’t seem to separate himself, to pull himself back into reality, no matter how many times he tells himself it’s Sherlock there, Sherlock with him, that Sherlock is real and isn’t going anywhere, and that Moran is far, far away.

“Sherlock,” he gasps, eventually, a long time later.

“I’m here, John. I’m right here. I’m not going anywhere.”

“I need you--”

“What do you need, John?”

“Touch me?” John lifts his head, and his breathing still isn’t right, his heart is still pounding. He needs something to ground him. Anything. Pain will work. He’ll take the pain just to know that it’s Sherlock’s hand against his skin.

Sherlock hesitates for the barest second, and then sits beside him and gently places his hand against the back of John’s neck.

It stings at first, and John hisses, but it feels wonderful, too. Real and grounding and present and alive. He’ll take it. He breathes into it, through it, and his breath finally starts to calm. His heart begins to slow. He can feel Sherlock relax slightly next to him, and then lean a bit into him. It’s ok, even though it spreads the stinging around, where their bodies meet. He needs it right now, to feel real. The pain ramps itself up in small increments, suffusing him, but he takes it. He’ll take it all for now, to have the comfort of Sherlock’s familiar hand against his neck, Sherlock’s weight against his side. 

After a few minutes, once his breath has finally got back to normal, John sits up straighter and nods.

“Thank you, Sherlock.”

Sherlock tries to smile at him, but it looks sick to John, and he knows that Sherlock hates not being able to touch him without causing him pain, but he’d needed that pain, in that moment. It kept him from losing his grip entirely. He just doesn’t know how to explain that to Sherlock. 

\----

John takes to walking, after that first walk with Sherlock, whenever he feels cooped up or claustrophobic or in need of a break from Sherlock and the look he seems to wear constantly.

It’s a look that on anyone else John would call shell-shock, or something like it. It’s a look of blank terror, and when it’s not that look, it’s a look of concern and worry, and John can’t stand being the subject of it all. The. Time.

The worst, perhaps (today, right now) is that he’s a reminder of what John is missing, of what’s gone. And all John wants to do in response is crawl into his arms and never leave.

But that isn’t really an option. So John walks. He runs away.

He walks often.

At least once a day. Whenever the panic starts to creep in. Because he can’t talk about it, he can barely acknowledge that it’s there to himself, let alone speak of it to anyone else.

Sometimes he walks two or three times a day.

There are words crowded on his tongue, lodged in his throat, that he can’t seem to dislodge. He can’t seem to reach out to Sherlock, though he knows he should. He keeps telling himself he should. Sherlock needs him right now. Needs assurance. John needs assurance right now. Assurance he can’t conjure from himself, and that he certainly can’t manage to voice for Sherlock.

And if he can’t help Sherlock, why should he be helped? He doesn’t deserve it, not when he can’t do anything in return.

John tries not to feel worthless without his empathy, but it’s hard.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SO I decided to update twice this week. Depending on whether you count Sunday as part of last week or this week. Whatever. But yeah, things are finally starting to coalesce in my head, so I'm hoping this will spark even more writing. I _think_ this might end up around twenty chapters. Give or take a few.
> 
> Warnings for awkwardness upcoming? I guess.

“You’ve been restless,” he says quietly across the room, watching John where he sits fidgeting in his chair. He has been for days, walking often, avoiding Sherlock more and more, retreating into his own head, not talking, but fidgeting when he is in the flat. Sherlock noticed, of course he did. He notices everything when it comes to John, and even more so lately than before. He’s been... watching, whenever John remains in the same room as him for more than a few moments. Gauging. Doing his best to read John without the normal cues, the mental ones that aren’t there anymore. That may never been there again. 

He used to be quite good at it. Before.

John snorts and rolls his eyes. Indication that he finds Sherlock’s statement to be something obvious, and indication that he’s annoyed that Sherlock stated it as well. _I’m sorry, John, I can’t help but notice when it comes to you, and sometimes you make me stupid,_ Sherlock thinks, perhaps a bit irritated himself. But he doesn’t voice the thought, and that’s something John has changed about him. He holds his tongue, sometimes, for John.

John hasn’t been letting him in. John has pushed him away at every opportunity and he hates it. He hates how small it makes him feel, how useless and unwanted and helpless, and feeling that way makes him so angry.

John has been distant. He constantly wants out, he keeps going for walks and disappearing and Sherlock hates when he disappears, it terrifies him when John disappears. He fears the worst has happened every time. He fears the worst will happen and that he _won’t know it_ and won’t be able to prevent it. John seems to want nothing other than to be away from Sherlock, and Sherlock holds more tightly each time he leaves.

He’s terrified all the time, and it makes him angry. He doesn’t want John to leave, he doesn’t want to lose John, and it feels like it’s happening by inches, each day. They are losing each other, and Sherlock can see it happening, and he has no idea how to prevent it. He knows that his clinging, the sharp words he can’t always hold back, are only making things worse, only driving John away faster. 

Sherlock almost wishes he’d just go, just leave already and get it over with, so Sherlock can fall apart in peace.

“You’re restless,” Sherlock says again. He doesn’t want this to turn into an argument. What can he do to make it not an argument? It’s always an argument, these days. Everything he says starts an argument. 

John looks across the room at him. Stills. Waits.

He wants to be close to John, to hold onto some shred of the closeness he’s got used to. He wants to feel like John is his again, like he is John’s. He doesn’t want to argue, and he doesn’t want to feel John slipping through his fingers. He wants something to remember when John is gone.

“I want to watch you pleasure yourself, John.” There, he said it. Truthfully, he’s been thinking about it most of the afternoon, the way John looks, the way he feels, the way he makes Sherlock feel. He wants to see it, even if he can’t feel it right now.

It’s as close as he can get to John right now. Without hurting him. As much as he longs to press his body against John’s, to sink into him, to kiss him senseless, he knows he can’t. But he needs that closeness. He needs to feel John near him. And it will make John feel better, it will please John. Sherlock wants to please John, wants him to feel better, to feel something like normal, even if only for a few minutes. John likes orgasms, and it’s been since before all this happened that they were together.

Sherlock misses that, too. He never thought he would, but he does. He aches with missing John, with missing being close to him. He will always ache for John.

John smiles at him, soft and amused, the truest smile he’s given Sherlock in _weeks_ , the closest he’s appeared to actually _happy_ and it takes Sherlock’s breath away for a moment, to see that hint of his John. “You want to watch while I have a wank.”

It’s not a question, and John isn’t mocking him. John never mocks, when it comes to Sherlock and sex.

“Yes.”

“All right.”

\----

Something goes wrong, almost immediately. It’s not the same, not the way it usually is, not the way Sherlock wants it to be, it’s not right, he can’t feel it, and he doesn’t like it, and he can’t fix it. John doesn’t seem to enjoy himself the way he normally does. He doesn’t feed off of Sherlock the way he usually does, off of Sherlock’s desire for him, for his mind and his body and his emotions, and Sherlock doesn’t feel what John feels.

Sherlock wants to sink into John. He wants it more than he’s ever wanted anything he can currently remember. He wants to sink into John’s head, into his skin, into his heart. He wants to be close, closer, as close as possible. He wants to feel John’s heartbeat like his own, wants to feel it echoing through his head, like he’s tucked into John’s chest, right next to his heart. But there’s a maddening gap between them, between their bodies and their minds, and nothing he can do will bridge it. If he tries to reach for John, he’ll cause him pain. He tries to reach for John mentally, but it’s like throwing himself against a brick wall, just like every other time he’s done it, both consciously and not over the past weeks; it’s futile, and it hurts.

All it does is highlight just how far apart they really are, and they both know it.

Sherlock is only aroused in the most clinical sense. Watch partner arouse and stimulate self, feel some sense of responding arousal. It’s nothing like it should be, like he wants it to be. All he can do is _think_ , analyze, observe, and this is supposed to be about the opposite, it’s supposed to be about feeling and nothing else. It’s supposed to be about John, and Sherlock can’t get over how wrong it all feels long enough to concentrate on John.

John is supposed to overwhelm him, take him over with sensation. Sherlock is supposed to throw himself into it, into that miasma of pleasure and heat and touch. John is supposed to infuse him, and Sherlock is supposed to soak it up, be filled up by John until he whispers through Sherlock’s veins like the best kind of drug.

But none of that happens.


	10. Chapter 10

John comes with a grunt, with his eyes squeezed shut, with his hand fisted in the t-shirt that Sherlock sleeps in. That wasn’t lovely. That wasn’t at all like the way it usually feels; he’s supposed not to be able to tell where he ends and Sherlock begins right now, he supposed to be overwhelmed with _Sherlock_ , and all he can feel is his own pounding heart and the inadequate, lowly flood of hormones that comes of orgasm. He only enjoyed that for a certain, small value of ‘enjoy’.

_Ugh_

John doesn’t know if he feels violated or dirty or just plain depressed. Or perhaps a strange combination of all three, though he knows that the first one is wildly out of place and not quite even the thing he’s looking for.

He usually enjoys it immensely when Sherlock watches him. He loves it. It turns him on; it’s ridiculously hot. It doesn’t make him feel watched, it makes him feel _observed_ , down to his core. Sherlock’s focus is so acute, so overwhelming that John can feel nothing else, and it makes him feel _adored_ , as much as feeling Sherlock’s adoration in his head, possibly even more.

Sherlock hadn’t been watching the same way he normally does tonight.

John feels none of what he wants to be feeling.

He opens his eyes slowly. Sherlock smiles at him from a few inches away, a thin, brittle smile that he tries to return. John’s not sure he succeeds. Sherlock blinks at him, and when John lets go his shirt, rolls onto his back.

John feels empty. Bereft. Like nothing will ever be bright again. He wants nothing more than to run, because he wants to follow Sherlock across their bed and burrow into him until he can’t stand the pain of it anymore, and even longer.

“I’m going to shower.”

Sherlock doesn’t even acknowledge him speaking. Certainly doesn’t move to join him, or stop him, or anything. John wishes he would, as much as he’s glad of the opportunity to be out of Sherlock’s field of vision for a few blessed minutes. 

It should make him feel happy, to be alone for a bit. It should make him feel guilty. 

Instead he just feels sad.

John stands under the spray for a long time, until the water has gone cold, until he’s covered in goosebumps and shivering, and wishes with everything he has for his damn empathy to come back, because he’s not sure he can live like this, with Sherlock, this half relationship they’re living right now.

When he gets out of the shower, he’ll keep on. He’ll keep moving, ever forward, trying to figure out how to live like this, but for a few minutes, he lets the despair swamp him, safe in the knowledge that at least Sherlock won’t know he’s falling apart.

\----

When he comes out of the bathroom, Sherlock isn’t in bed. John finds him in his armchair, sat in the dark lounge, hands pressed together beneath his chin.

“Good night, Sherlock,” John says, quiet.

Sherlock doesn’t answer him.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm pretty sure I looked these two chapters over and edited them. God, I hope I did. 
> 
> Anyway! Here! Enjoy some more angst!
> 
> It's been a long and dreary day and I've been kinda groggy as hell. Leave me lots of love, if you would.

Sherlock hates many things, with varying degrees of intensity, but there is nothing he hates more right now than the fact that he cannot touch John without causing him pain. He’d _hesitated_. Him. Sherlock Holmes. He’d hesitated when John had asked for his touch because of it causing John pain, and he hates that as well. He hadn’t _wanted_ to touch John, he hadn’t wanted to cause him pain, despite John requesting it, despite knowing that John needed something at that moment to feel real. Despite his own desperate need for it.

He doesn’t want to think about what it means, that John had that dream, the sort of dream that means Sebastian Moran is most likely poking at his head.

He doesn’t want to think about what it means about Moran, his powers, the staggering range the man has, that he can reach out over untold, uncounted miles and get into John’s head, get into his dreams. He doesn’t want to contemplate what it means, that he’s poking at John’s head, making him feel things this easily, and that John has no way of fighting him off right now. 

Sherlock wants to kill Moran with his bare hands. For even thinking about John, for fucking with him when he’s already traumatized John before, when John is vulnerable, when Sherlock can’t _do anything_.

Sherlock doesn’t know if he’ll be able to tell if John’s emotions are his own right now, with John out of commission, and their connection so depressed as to be essentially dead. He doesn’t know if he’ll be able to feel the difference like he usually can, if he can’t feel John’s emotions at all. He hopes that he’ll be able to deduce it, but there’s no guarantee without being able to feel John’s emotions the way he feels his own. There’s no guarantee he won’t simply take John at face value, that he won’t let John slip through his fingers and into Moran’s grasp, that he won’t lose John, that John won’t just walk away from him.

There wouldn’t be anything he could do. There would be no way to fight that. He’s already losing John, slowly and painfully, and Moran could sweep in at any time and snatch him away, completing Sherlock’s destruction in one fell swoop. He has no idea how to fight what’s already happening, let alone how he’d cope if Moran were to show up now.

He doesn’t know what they’re going to do to deal with Moran’s recurring attacks on John’s psyche; he’s afraid they might have to talk to Mycroft about it, get him buried in some deeper hole than he’s already in. Sherlock doesn’t want to deal with _this_ on top of everything else that’s going on. Don’t they deserve something of a break? Can’t they fix one problem--if it’s even fixable--before another one crops up?

But that’s nearly the least of his problems right now. He’ll deal with Moran when the time comes, if the time comes.

Sherlock takes that particular issue and folds it up tightly and shoves it down deep in his brain, where he can avoid dwelling on it for now. Where he can almost avoid thinking about it. Almost.

Instead, he turns his thoughts to the issue of John, because John is present and still his--except not. He stretches out on the sofa to ruminate on it for the afternoon; if there’s anything else they can do to help John along, if he’s doing enough to keep John safe, if he’s doing enough to help John heal, what else he can do to keep John safer and help him heal faster.

He doesn’t want to think about the failed attempt he’d made to bridge the growing rift between them with the disastrous sex, but he does. John had taken a shower after and had gone to bed, and had more dreams of Moran, and hadn’t even asked for Sherlock to touch him, to ground him, after. He’d simply retreated briefly to the bathroom and then climbed back into bed and stayed there, quiet and not sleeping, the rest of the night. Sherlock stayed in his makeshift nest next to John and stayed quiet, unsure of what to say, what to do, feeling the gap widening by inches and hating it.

He doesn’t return from his mind palace until Mycroft clomps up the stairs. 

It’s dark outside, and the flat is dark and quiet.

_Where’s John?_ Sherlock sits up, looking around, pulling his dressing gown around him in preparation for flinging himself off the sofa to search the flat. _Possibly on another walk. Text to be sure._

Mycroft looks down at him from the doorway and holds up a hand. “John is out with Gregory, Sherlock. Did you miss them leaving?”

Sherlock chooses to glare instead of answering. Mycroft already knows the answer to that anyway, and Mycroft just gives him one of his most infuriating smiles, sets his umbrella by the door, hangs up his coat.

“You’re not staying--” Sherlock starts, glare changing into the same scowl he’s given Mycroft since childhood, when Mycroft had made him do all sorts of things he hadn’t liked, like bathing and going to bed and wearing pants.

Mycroft quirks one eyebrow. Apparently he is. He goes into the kitchen and returns with the tea a few minutes later. Sherlock sits back on the sofa and grumbles to himself before moving reluctantly across the room, dragging his feet the whole way, and accepting a cup of tea from his brother.

Mycroft still makes him tea the way he’d liked it as a child, but for once Sherlock doesn’t complain. There’s something strangely comforting about it, though he’d never admit it to Mycroft, or anyone else for that matter. Not that Mycroft isn’t aware already; he’s always been able to read Sherlock better than anyone else.

They don’t say a word to each other, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t conversing, that they aren’t communicating. They’ve been able to communicate with subtle quirks of the brow and twists of the lips since Sherlock was about three years old, and it’s a habit they’ve never outgrown or given up. It’s almost telepathy.

_How are you holding up, Sherlock?_

_As if you care._

_You know I worry about you, baby brother._

_I hate it when you call me that._

_Why? It’s a fact._

_I just do._ And Sherlock tries to cross his arms, but the tea cup gets in his way, so he settles for taking an angry sip and glaring at his brother.

Mycroft changes the subject with a subtle twitch of his eyebrows. _And how is John doing?_

Sherlock sighs. _I’m worried about him._

Mycroft nods. He’s quite aware of Sherlock’s concern for his friend and lover, he’s only surprised that Sherlock so readily admitted it. He doesn’t ‘say’ anything for a while. Sherlock sips his tea and glares sullenly at nothing, a constantly reiterated _why do I tolerate you?_

_I’m sure John will recover with time._

_Don’t try to placate me, Mycroft._

_Of course not. Apologies._

They descend further into silence after that. Eventually, Sherlock speaks, long after his tea has gone cold and Mycroft has started doing something of certainly vital importance on his phone, like playing Tetris Blitz.

“They won’t be out late. You don’t have to wait. I’m _fine_.”

“Perhaps I wanted the company. Your conversation is, as ever, scintillating.”

“No pub within a walkable radius of the flat will serve John more than one pint, as well as several along each of his most-travelled Tube routes.”

Mycroft blinks at him for a moment, before a hint of a smile quirks the left side of his mouth. _Well played, brother._

“In that case,” Mycroft says, standing and straightening his impeccably straight waistcoat, “I shall take my leave. Give my best to John and Mrs Hudson, would you?”

Sherlock growls at him in reply, and Mycroft takes his sublimely smug leave.


	12. Chapter 12

John walks into the pub a step behind Greg and breathes a sigh of relief, followed closely by noticing again that strange feeling of blankness he gets from everyone lately. 

He’s been looking forward to this for days, to getting out of the flat for a while, to having a few minutes to himself, to doing something bloody _normal_. It’s amazing how hard he’s clinging to normality, when he was never normal to begin with. He’ll take the facade of it over the way Sherlock’s been any day, though.

It’s hard, on top of everything else, dealing with how Sherlock isn’t dealing with it.

For a man who’d spent so much of his life ignoring his own emotions and pretending they didn’t exist, he’s come to be incredibly dependent on John’s empathy and their shared link.

He’s not the only one, though.

But John doesn’t want to be coddled. He doesn’t want to be comforted through this. He wants to get on with it. John wants to ignore the problem until it goes away. Or until it doesn’t, and he learns to deal with his new normal, relearns how to read people, how to go through life.

He hopes it doesn’t come down to that. 

He doesn’t need comfort right now. He needs to be doing things,and John doesn’t understand why Sherlock can’t see that, why he can’t deduce that. John has ever been a man of action, he has always preferred doing to thinking. Why he doesn’t simply know, as that’s how things have always been. They’re both like that, to a certain extent, they’d rather be _doing_ , would rather be acting instead of reacting.

John is nothing but reaction right now, and he hates it. He’s been knocked so far off his feet, off balance that it’s all he can do, react and react and react some more.

John knows that Greg had seen that practically immediately the other day when he’d come to visit, and that’s why he’d suggested this pub outing. He wanted to give John a reminder of normal. He wanted to remind John that he’d survived, even if things aren’t quite back on an even keel yet. 

Greg’s a good friend, and John could’ve kissed him for this. He’ll refrain, though. Sherlock would blow a head gasket, to say the least.

Sherlock has been... overbearing. 

Which is probably putting it gently. 

John appreciates it. Sort of. He also hates it. He knows that Sherlock means well, and that Sherlock tends to channel his less easily dealt with emotions (that is to say: all of them) into anger and hatred and other destructive forces. He knows that Sherlock is worried sick about him, and that Sherlock cannot stand that he can’t indulge his first inclination, which is to cling to John, physically and mentally.

It makes John’s heart ache, that they can’t turn to one another for comfort. They’ve both come to rely on that. It makes him ache when he sees Sherlock abort a motion towards him, and when Sherlock ends up sleeping next to their bed more often than not. It makes him ache to remember that they just got married, and that they should be having near-constant smug married sex, and instead they can’t even manage to sleep in the same bed.

He misses Sherlock. Misses him so much, even though he’s right there.

John needs a drink.

Truthfully, he can see the appeal in losing himself in the bottom of a bottle right now. But he’s not his sister, and he’s always dealt better with things than she does. (Mostly he believes that’s due to his empathy, but he can’t be sure.) So he’ll deal with this too. 

OK, so he doesn’t always deal with things well. Sometimes he runs away. There’s nowhere to run away too right now, though.

And the only thing he wants to run from, really, is Seb Moran. 

If he never regains his empathy, will he still be a target?

Knowing he would no longer have to worry about Moran would almost make this blankness he’s living with now worth it.

Almost.

The bartender smiles as they take seats at the bar. 

“Good to see you, John,” he says. “The usual?”

“Yeah, cheers,” John replies. He turns to Greg. “For you? First round’s on me.”

“A pint of bitter, please.”

Their drinks are pulled and set before them shortly. John lifts his glass and taps it against Greg’s. “To surviving.”

Greg chuckles. “To Sherlock being occupied for a bit.”

They sip.

“Mycroft is stopping by the flat tonight,” Greg adds. “Said something about keeping Sherlock company.”

John blinks. “Since when do they keep company with each other?”

“I think he was feeling sentimental. And he probably knows how much Sherlock’s been fretting over you.”

“He has been doing that, yes.”

They silently drink for a few minutes.

“How you holding up?” Greg ventures.

“It’s...,” John starts. He has to think for a minute. “It’s weird. And it hurts when he touches me. Which, honestly, he does a lot.”

“It hurts when Sherlock touches you?”

“Yeah,” John sighs. “I hate it. Have you ever heard of something like that?” 

He sits back and watches while Greg thinks about it for a few minutes.

“Honestly? No. But you two are sort of a special case, aren’t you? I’ve never heard of someone losing their ability, either.”

“I don’t think it’s lost, really. Just... suppressed, I think.”

“Head injuries, who’d have ‘em, huh?”

John smiles. “Cheers.” They clink glasses and sip again. 

By unspoken agreement, they don’t talk anymore about Sherlock, or about John and his peculiarities for the rest of those first pints. They discuss the footie on the telly over the bar. They talk a bit about rugby, and they touch on being in a relationship with someone who’s as much of a workaholic as you (in Greg’s case), and just about anything else under the sun.

And then John tries to order a second pint. Because he wants a second pint, and a little bit more time to feel normal.

“Sorry, John, I can’t do that,” the bartender--James? Henry? John can’t remember his name--says.

“What do you mean?”

“I’m under strict order from your man not to serve you more than one pint.”

John blinks. “You have got to be fucking kidding me.”

“Afraid not, mate. He’ll have my license if I don’t comply.”

“What do you mean he’ll have your license?”

“I mean he’ll get me shut down. He says he knows people, and I believe him.”

John splutters. Beside him, Greg snorts and tries not to let it degenerate into full on laughter. He doesn’t particularly succeed.

“I’m gonna fucking kill him,” John mutters. Then he brightens up a bit. “Can you give me a half pint? I won’t tell him if you don’t?”

And for the love of god, he’s begging a bartender for a half pint of beer, like some poor alcoholic down to his last quid and trying to make it work.

The bartender--Scott, maybe?--waffles for a minute before nodding. “If I get shut down, I’m coming after you.”

“Fair enough.”

John sucks down that half pint in less than ten seconds. Greg takes a bit longer with his second pint, and then they settle up and head back towards Baker St.

“We’ll go somewhere else next time, okay?” Greg suggests as they amble along.

“Yeah, that might work,” John agrees. He has a sneaking suspicion he knows Sherlock better than that, however.


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry these two chapters are so short. They're sort of interlude-y as well. More angst next couple of chapters! 
> 
> (Soon, I swear. Soon the angst will abate and things will get better. I PROMISE.)

Sherlock decides to eat dinner, so in celebration they go to Angelo’s. It’s a short enough walk from the flat, and it’s pleasant outside, so when John says he wants to walk instead of taking a cab, Sherlock agrees. 

John seems a bit edgy around the other people on the streets, trying to avoid them as much as possible. Sherlock files that away for analysis and possible questioning. He’s hesitant to question John about it right now; it doesn’t seem the right time. Not when John is in a rare (these days) pleasant mood. He isn’t withdrawn like he has been, increasingly.

So he deduces the people around them as they walk, and it’s almost normal for a few minutes. It _is_ normal for a few minutes, just a pleasant evening walk, Sherlock making deductions about people and John laughing along. John nods at all the right places and smiles, but he seems slightly distracted, still slightly distanced, still avoiding touching anyone whenever possible, and Sherlock doesn’t like that. He wants all of John’s attention. Always.

He understands why John is distracted, though he doesn’t like it, not even a little. Sherlock cannot imagine being without one of his senses for as long as John has been at this point, and he knows John must feel the loss far more keenly than Sherlock does; Sherlock has only ever been empathic because of John, not on his own. Sherlock is still able to see, able to observe, but John no longer has his primary sense, the one that provides him with so much information about the world around him.

Angelo is his usual gregarious and pleasant self when they enter the restaurant, showing them to their normal table and bringing out a candle like he always does. John smiles softly when he puts it on the table, and Sherlock watches him as he sits back and peruses the menu.

“What do you feel like tonight?” John asks him after they’re settled, when Angelo has brought them menus and a bottle of wine. Sherlock hadn’t managed to speak up in protest before John thanked him for the wine and set about opening it, and John glares at him when he starts to speak up to tell John not to drink too much of it. He pours each of them a glass before going back to the menu. Sherlock decides to let it go, though he worries about what the impairment of alcohol could do to John. Is he still recovering from the concussion? All of Sherlock’s research indicates that recovery from even a minor concussion takes far longer than previously believed, but he doesn’t know if the alcohol will set that back or if John will just end up a bit drunker than normal.

Sherlock shrugs. “I’m not particularly hungry.”

“You’re the one who decided you were eating, so you should eat.” John’s tone isn’t even particularly stern; he sounds more fond than anything else to Sherlock.

Sherlock frowns. “I’ll have whatever Angelo brings me, it’s fine. What are you having?”

He should be able to deduce that. He shouldn’t need to deduce it though; Sherlock should know what John feels like having for dinner without even looking at him. But he doesn’t. 

He can _deduce_ how John feels, looking at the way he holds himself, the little clues that only Sherlock ever sees, but he can’t feel it. It’s no less disconcerting now, more than a month later, than it was when John first woke up in hospital.

“I think I’ll try the pumpkin ravioli,” John muses, seeming not to notice Sherlock’s scrutiny. But then, he’s well used to Sherlock’s scrutiny, so perhaps he doesn’t really notice it anymore. Or perhaps he always notices it, but he’s accustomed to it and tunes it out, or ignores it. Sherlock doesn’t know, and he can’t deduce it.

So he asks.

“Do you notice the way I watch you, John?”

“Hmm?” John looks up from the menu, still slightly distracted. He must be hungrier than Sherlock had thought.

“I watch you all the time, John. Surely you notice?”

“What?” John frowns briefly, before he parses Sherlock’s question. “Oh. Yeah, sure I do. Why?”

“You don’t seem to.”

John shrugs. “Used to it by now, aren’t I?”

“It doesn’t bother you? It seems to bother the majority of people.”

“I like being the center of your attention, Sherlock.”

Sherlock blinks at him. “Oh.”

John smiles at him, briefly, a bright warm smile. A normal smile. For a brief moment, everything falls away, and Sherlock smiles back, and everything is fine.

Sherlock watches him all through dinner. John enjoys his pumpkin ravioli, with the cream sauce and the fresh house-made italian sausage on top. Sherlock barely tastes the linguini with pesto that Angelo whips up for him.

All he can think about is getting John home, where he will be safe. Where no one will want to hurt him, or knock him upside the head or take him away from Sherlock. Where he can be the center of Sherlock’s attention forever.


	14. Chapter 14

John spends a lot of time trying to get used to the way he feels these days. A lot of time, and a lot of thought. It doesn’t seem to be helping.

It’s been over a month since they were released from hospital (or rather, since John was released and Sherlock finally consented to coming home instead of remaining glued to his side). They’ve gone on a few small cases, silly, easy things that Sherlock normally wouldn’t glance twice at. Even John can tell they barely rate a three on Sherlock’s scale. He doesn’t know why Sherlock even bothered to take them, as they clearly bored him and he barely had to put any effort of thought into them. 

One he solved without even getting up out of the chair in Lestrade’s office. It took him twenty minutes.

Sherlock has otherwise done his damnedest to keep John in the flat as much as possible. The excuses he comes up with are getting ever more ridiculous and over-the-top. He’s being even more possessive and overbearing than usual. And John has admitted that he likes being the center of Sherlock’s attention, and he generally does, but this is getting to be too much. He feels hunted under Sherlock’s gaze anymore. It leaves John’s skin crawling, some days, the scrutiny. 

He feels blamed. Not that he isn’t to blame, he’s the one who hooked them together, brain to brain, in the first place. And now it’s his fault that the connection they’d forged, the strength that it gave their relationship, is gone. Poof. He has no idea how to get it back; he has no idea if it will come back, and if so, when.

It’s his fault that Sherlock is so dependant on him, so emotionally tied to him. And it’s his fault that they’re both left floundering, barely keeping their heads above water.

He knows that’s how he feels most days, and he’s pretty sure that’s how Sherlock is feeling as well, if his irritability and possessiveness are any indicator.

Greg has been by several times, bringing Sherlock more cold cases, trying to drag John out from under his watchful gaze for a few hours at a time. 

It almost works once or twice. Until they discover that pretty much every pub either of them has ever frequented has strict instructions not to serve John more than one pint. John wants to tear his hair out in frustration. Instead he goes home and yells at Sherlock for it, because it’s Sherlock who’s done this, it’s Sherlock who went around--god only knows when--to every pub John’s ever heard of and bribed or blackmailed them into limiting John’s alcohol consumption.

Which is approximately the time that the fighting starts. Or starts to get worse.

Not that they haven’t had fights before. They’ve always bickered. There have been the occasional actual fights as well, no relationship is perfect. John has had to holler at Sherlock any number of times, and Sherlock has never felt the need not to express his ire when it’s directed at John, either.

This is different.

How can it be otherwise?


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hopefully you've noticed that I've been switching back and forth between Sherlock's and John's POVs in this story, and that thus far it's gone Sherlock first, and then John.
> 
> Well, I switched it up for these two chapters. So this chapter is from John's POV, and the next is from Sherlock's.
> 
> Also, sorry about the angst.

Greg glances at John from the corner of his eye as he lifts his glass and says, “You know, you should probably talk to him.”

John glares at his beer and doesn’t reply. What’s there to say to that? He _should_ talk to Sherlock, he knows he should. What he doesn’t quite know, right now, is how? How does he explain how he feels? How does he burden Sherlock with all the worry and fear he’s got in his head, when he can already tell that Sherlock has enough worry and fear of his own to deal with? He shouldn’t have to deal with John’s too.

They finish their pints in mostly not-awkward silence, while John contemplates Greg’s directive, and comes to the same conclusion he’s been coming to for weeks. He can’t. He simply can’t do that to Sherlock. Not right now. Not like this. It’s not fair. John looks down the bar at the bartender, makes a gesture towards his now empty glass, but the bartender shakes his head with a somewhat chagrined expression. 

“Well, let’s go then,” Greg says, since he saw it just as clearly as John. He’s not going to drink when John can’t, apparently. John feels grateful to him for that. Their trips to the pub have grown fewer and further apart, John caught under Sherlock’s constant scrutiny and Greg busy with his own life. His normal life, with work and relationships and no bits of him missing and missed like a phantom limb, a constant reminder of what he had that’s now gone, and the constant fear that he’s driving away the one person who means more to him than anything else in the world, simply by keeping his mouth shut. 

At least, John assumes Greg doesn’t have those worries.

They get up and put their jackets on, heading for the door. This pub is further from the flat than most, and they’d taken the Tube down, in hopes that maybe Sherlock hadn’t ventured this far on his quest to keep John sober and close to him. 

He had. 

They leave the pub and start ambling back towards the Tube station, a couple blocks away.

“Even I can see you’re miserable, and he is too. He wears his heart on his sleeve when it comes to you, and he wants to help, John. He never wants to help anyone. Maybe you should let him in a bit?”

John nods, but he doesn’t say anything. What’s there to say? _‘I’ve been trying and trying but I can’t force the words past my lips. All I want every minute of every day is to wrap myself up in him and never let go but I can’t and it kills me and it’s killing him and I don’t know how to fix us because I can’t even fix my own broken brain.’_

“You may not be empathic right now,” Greg continues as they approach the station, his voice gentle and soothing, “but that doesn’t mean you haven’t made him empathetic, at least to you.”

And that’s the worst part, right there: Sherlock _has_ become empathetic to John. He can’t feel John’s every emotion right now, but that doesn’t mean that he can’t read them in his posture and his expressions and any number of other tiny details. He can see it all, and it’s all making him just as miserable as John is. And he isn’t saying anything either. He clings to John, ever tighter, and John feels like he’s slipping away anyway.

\----

“It’s not late, want to get something to eat?” Greg says when they’re on the train, standing together near the doors. It’s not crowded, and no one looks at them.

“All right,” John agrees. He’ll take the option that keeps him out for a while longer, even though all the people make him vaguely nervous. So far he’s been able to avoid most physical contact with strangers, but every now and again someone brushes against him and John’s treated to random images of their life. It doesn’t hurt in quite the same way physical contact with, say, Sherlock does, but it’s not comfortable either.

“Anything good around the flat?”

“Yeah, what’re you in the mood for?”

“How about pizza?”

“OK. Yeah, that works.”

“Good pizza?”

John shrugs.

“You don’t eat pizza much.”

“Lot of Asian food, mostly. Interesting foods tend to work better on Sherlock. There’s a Pizza Express, near the flat.” 

“Ever been?”

“Never set foot in there in my life.”

“They serve wine, don’t they?”

John’s expression brightens. “They do.”

“Let’s try there, then. Maybe they’ll sell us a bottle.”

\----

They’re nearing their destination when John speaks up again. The silence has been companionable. That’s one of the things he likes most about Greg, that’s he’s comfortable with silence. Sherlock is also comfortable with silence, though he’s been less so of late. “So how’s Mycroft?”

“Good,” Greg replies. “He’s been busy what with--well, whatever it is that’s going on in the world right now. You know.”

John shudders. “I don’t. And I’d like to keep it that way. Haven’t seen him in a while. You’re good?” He makes a gesture that’s meant to encompass both Greg and Mycroft, and their quiet and steady relationship. 

“We’re fine. He wants to go on holiday.”

“Mycroft takes holidays?”

“So he says, though I can’t quite imagine it. He hasn’t taken time off yet, though. I imagine I’ll get up for work one day and will be informed I’ve taken all of my time for the year and will then be whisked off to god only knows where.”

“Probably.”

“He visits Sherlock while we’re out, you know.”

“Oh, that helps explain himself’s mood when I get home.”

“Well, that and you’re out of his sight for longer than three minutes.”

“It’s terrifying because it’s true.” John shrugs and half-smiles.

“Mycroft says he’s just checking in, but I’m fairly certain he’s also keeping Sherlock from stalking you.”

“Well fuck, I’ll have to get him a decent Christmas present this year then, won’t I?”

“If you figure out what to buy the man, let me know, yeah?”

“Will do.”

\----

They reach the Pizza Express on Marylebone High Street and find it not too crowded. They’re shown to a seat pretty quickly.

The restaurant gladly sells them a bottle of wine to go with the pizza they order.

\----

John is a little tipsy when he gets home. The pizza had been pretty good, as had the company. The wine had been wonderful. John’s never been much of a wine drinker, although it’s always been Harry’s drug of choice, and he and Greg had polished off the bottle between them pretty quickly. Quickly enough that John’s a bit fuzzy around the edges now, feeling warm and pleased and more relaxed than he’s been in ages.

He can’t remember the last time he was able to relax. It had been before the case that ended with the car crash. It had been before they’d gone and had their quiet wedding ceremony, and that makes him pause on the steps up to the flat and frown at himself. 

They just got married, and now they’re falling apart. John can’t help but wonder if he’d jinxed the whole thing.

_Stuck with me_ , he thinks to himself, not happily. _Forever._

For the first time in a long time, he wonders if this is how his mother felt all the time. Overwhelmed and unhappy. He only vaguely remembers her at this point, and more than anything he remembers how unhappy she’d felt all the time.

Sherlock looks him up and down then nods once in acknowledgement of his missing something, someplace, and says “Pizza.”

John’s heart falls into his stomach, good mood gone with Sherlock’s frown, with the way Sherlock is looking at him, as though he did this deliberately. His expression isn’t accusatory, just frowning and unhappy, but John can’t help but read it that way. He can’t help but hear all the words Sherlock isn’t saying, can’t help but feel the chasm between them.

“Christ,” he mutters. “I’m not _leaving_ , Sherlock.” He turns and shuffles down the hallway towards bed, more certain with each step that all Sherlock heard was the ‘yet’ he has no intention of ever saying, let alone acting upon.


	16. Chapter 16

Sherlock wakes the next morning to the silence of what must be an empty flat. This isn’t entirely unusual, especially lately, but Sherlock finds himself sitting up and looking at the empty bed for a long time. Sherlock isn’t often the last one to wake in the flat, although in the time that they’ve been sharing a bed, the time he actually spends in it has increased exponentially. 

Sherlock usually wakes first, it’s true. One military habit that John shed readily enough is the penchant for being awake around sunrise every day. John loves very little more than a decent lie-in when he has the time, so Sherlock would generally wake up, allow himself a moment or two to smile in a stupid manner at himself and his luck, and then rise to whatever the day was to bring--even if it all it brought was an extended brood on the sofa. But every now and again, John would wake first, and he never left the bed before Sherlock on those days. Sherlock would wake to the warm feeling of John breathing quietly beside him.

Sherlock never had to ask why John stayed in bed with him, because he could _feel_ why John did it, and the memory of it now swamps him. It swamps him, and it takes his breath away, because he doesn’t have that now. There’s no John in their bed, breathing quietly, carding fingers through his hair or stroking his back slowly. There’s no John beside him, there’s no John in his head, and he can’t breathe around how much his misses John.

His half of the bed remains untouched. John’s is rumpled and hastily made. John’s been up for a while, then. Sherlock levers himself to his feet and pulls on a dressing gown as he shuffles down the hall and into the kitchen.

The kettle is half full and cold. There’s an empty plate in the sink, still with crumbs from toast on, and one lone smear of strawberry jam.

John is nowhere in evidence. The flat is hushed. The morning sun slants in the windows, highlighting the dust motes Sherlock has sent dancing with his movement. 

John’s been gone for a while, then.

Sherlock flicks the kettle back on and shuffles across the lounge to dig his phone out of the sofa cushions where he left it. He texts John, _Where are you?_

The kettle hasn’t even finished heating the water back up when he gets a reply. Sherlock stops staring at it--ha, a watched kettle _does_ boil.

_Out for a walk. Sunrise was nice._

Sherlock checks the time before texting back. John’s been gone for hours. How had he not woken up? How had he missed this?

But then, it’s not that surprising, since he can’t feel when John wakes up anymore.

_Not sleeping well still?_

_You know I’m not._ This text is accompanied by a colon and an open parentheses that Sherlock has to Google in order to properly interpret as a frowning face, an indicator that John isn’t happy about not sleeping well. 

Of course John isn’t happy about not sleeping well. Neither of them have been sleeping well. It’s been a long time since Sherlock has slept this poorly, and he’s notorious for not sleeping at all.

Sherlock leaves that one alone--how is he supposed to respond to that? He makes and drinks a cup of tea and eats a couple of digestives; John’s not here to yell at him about it, so who cares. He showers and dresses and has his coat on before he thinks to text John again.

_Going to Barts._

He gets John’s response in the cab. _OK. Have fun. Try to let Molly make you eat at some point?_

_Perhaps._ He feels almost like things are normal, for a few minutes, before an image pops in his head of their bed, half undisturbed and half rumpled from constant tossing and turning no matter how John tries to straighten it in the morning, and his thoughts turn back to how much is missing between them right now. 

Sherlock goes to Barts and commandeers one of the less-used basement labs and lets Molly bring him coffee, which she does with a wry expression these days. It’s still the awful shit from the canteen, but she doesn’t under-sweeten it anymore (John must have corrected her on that), and she rolls her eyes at him when he gets dismissive of her and pokes at him and does try to get him to eat around what must be lunch time. Sherlock spends the day immersed in experiments and doesn’t even realize that his phone didn’t have signal all day until he finally leaves and his phone starts pinging at him almost immediately. 

They’re all from John. 

They start out OK.

_Are you going to be home for dinner?_

_I think I’ll make that risotto you like. Maybe some garlic toast?_

_How’s that sound, Sherlock?_

_Sherlock?_

He notices a period of an hour or so in between that one and the next, which is where things start going downhill.

_Sherlock, I need your help._

_Sherlock?_

_Why arent you answering you git?_

_seriously, Sherlock this isnt funny_

_Sherlock???_

_are you angry with me?_

_wll you at least tell me what i did?_

(Sherlock can’t help but notice with growing horror at himself that John’s grammar and punctuation get worse as he gets more upset. And John must be upset about something, he never sounds like _this_ )

_sherlock please_

Sherlock doesn’t even read the last few before he starts dialing John’s number.

(They’re _i’m sorry sherlock_ _i didnt mean to_ and _why wont you answer me?_ )

John answers after the second ring. “Sherlock?” His voice hitches, but otherwise he sounds hollowed out with panic and fear, empty of everything else.

“John where are you?”

“In the park.”

“I’ll be there shortly.”

“OK.” He sounds small and scared. John never sounds small or scared, and Sherlock’s heart feels like it’s dropped into his stomach, which is utterly ridiculous and he hates it.

Sherlock gets in a cab and tells the driver the address, and to get him there as quickly as possible. The cabbie must believe him, or the look on his face, because he gets Sherlock there in near record time. Sherlock throws several bills at him without another glance and jumps from the vehicle, dashing across the street and narrowly avoiding being splattered by a routemaster. He runs flat out into the park. 

It’s getting dark quickly, just the last few moments of gloaming left, but Sherlock runs straight to that particular corner of the park that John always seems to frequent when he needs a bit of time to himself. Once there, where it’s deserted--and Sherlock wonders at that with some small part of his brain, because the park is almost never deserted, it only seems to empty out when John makes it so with his empathy--he stops, looking around in the falling darkness, panting a little after his run. A small spark of hope lights in a far corner of his brain.

“John?”

“I’m here,” says John in a small voice. He sticks his arm out from the tree he’s behind and waves it around a bit. Sherlock dashes over and around the tree to face John, stopping just short of throwing himself upon John to comfort and be comforted.

“Are you alright?” he asks instead.

John nods, half hearted, not looking up at him. “I just--” his voice cracks and he stops. Sherlock can see John shut his eyes and turn his head away.

Sherlock drops to his knees next to John, careful not to touch him, and gives him a thorough once over look. He doesn’t appear injured or even to be favoring his left side. He just seems tired, and sad. 

“What happened?”

“I was walking. Just walking. And--” John’s voice breaks again and he stops and takes a breath, then struggles to his feet before continuing, using the tree he’d been leaning against as support. Sherlock stands next to him, too close, almost touching. He wants to touch John, desperately. He wants to wrap John in his arms and keep the world from hurting him anymore.

“It was too much,” John continues, his voice soft now, so it won’t desert him again. “Too many people. All jumbled in my head, flashes and images and--awful things, Sherlock.”

Sherlock can’t help the spark of hope that ignites. Is it back? Is this finally over? He tries not to sound too eager, too excited when he questions, “Your empathy?”

John shakes his head, and Sherlock can very nearly feel his despair, his disappointment. He wishes he could feel them, but they wouldn’t be having this conversation if he could. John wouldn’t have been stuck in the park for hours if that were the case. Things would be normal if that were the case. 

“No, the other one. The one that hasn’t been off on walkabout. It’s like it’s in hyperdrive.” John sighs. “I came here, and it was quiet and there aren’t people around getting too close to me and making me see things. So I stayed. I was waiting for you to text me back so I could ask you to come get me. I was, um,” and he sounds a bit sheepish now, “having something of an anxiety attack about getting home, I think.”

John flushes a dull red that Sherlock can only barely see in the dying light. He’s embarrassed. 

_Something of an anxiety attack_ , Sherlock nearly snorts at the understatement. But he doesn’t, because John’s taught him that much. And he does care about John’s state of mind, and not just because of how often it affects his own.

“All right. Let’s get you home, then.” He makes his voice as matter of fact as he can, as bored-sounding as he can, because he knows that will make John feel better, to know that Sherlock knows and is acting like everything’s fine. 

Everything is most emphatically not fine.

Sherlock and John walk side by side out of the park, occasionally bumping shoulders. That much contact seems ok.

It’s fully dark now, but the street isn’t dark. It is crowded with the evening crowds, headed home, or to the pub, or to the theater or restaurants or wherever. Sherlock forges a path through the crowd, and John falls in behind him, following closely. When he looks back, John’s head is ducked, he’s avoiding the gazes of those around him, though it seems to Sherlock as though everyone’s eyes slide right past both of them right now.

John looks meek, as he never does. Never is.


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> These two are sort of lop-sided. It's... somewhat on purpose. I'd probably have evened them out a little bit more, but I've been sick.
> 
> As usual, this hasn't been beta'd. I'd apologize, but, well, I wouldn't actually.
> 
> Happy Halloween, folks. I hope you like some more angst. It will abate soon.

Sherlock just looks at John for a moment, standing still in the center of their living room. He looks grey and small and defeated, and Sherlock hates it. He hates all of this, so much. More than he’s ever hated anything before, and Sherlock has always been a person of strong passions, even when he was little. Even after they decided he was a sociopath and had no emotions at all. 

He’s caught by the sudden, desperate urge to hug John. Not that this is a particularly new urge for him, just that its onset now is sudden. And he shouldn’t act on it. 

Sherlock has never been very good at denying himself things he wants, though.

“Can I just--?” Sherlock takes off his coat and wraps it around John for the extra layer, the extra time, leaving only the top of his head exposed, and then wraps John in his arms, just for a moment, just to feel him close.

John goes stiff at first, but gradually relaxes in Sherlock’s arms. Sherlock can feel his muscles loosen, feel him lean back, into Sherlock, just for a moment. 

He counts the time in his head. The hug lasts for almost exactly seventy seconds.

Sherlock lets go, though. Because he has to. Because he’d trapped John in his coat and hugged him as tightly as he could, and it really wasn’t for John’s benefit, it was only for Sherlock. It was just what he needed, that moment of connection, of holding John close and tight.

John doesn’t look at him after Sherlock has pulled his coat from around John’s shoulders. He nods once and walks away, down the hall and into the bathroom.

Which is when Sherlock remembers John mentioning the brightness of the flashes he’s been getting from people all day, the reason he’d fled into the park and stayed there. He remembers how much pain had been in John’s voice, how extra sensitive he’d said he is right now.

“Stupid,” Sherlock mutters to himself. _I always miss something_. And this time it was too much. He shouldn’t have missed this, and now he’s assaulted John in a selfish attempt at comforting himself.

Sherlock strides down the hall and bangs on the bathroom door. John doesn’t answer right away, so he pushes in, stands close behind John--careful to avoid touching him--and watches him splash water on his face from the sink.

John looks at him in the mirror after a few moments, water dripping down his face. It doesn’t hide how red his eyes are, how upset he clearly is. 

Sherlock reaches out and grabs John’s towel off the back of the door, hands it to him with a frown.

“John, I--”

“Sherlock, don’t--”

“I’m sorry, John. I… that was Not Good, and I should’ve remembered.”

“It’s all right, Sherlock. I understand--”

“John, no--”

“I get it, Sherlock, trust me. Don’t worry about it. It was… nice. Considering.”

“I hurt you, John. I don’t want that. Never that.”

“I know,” John murmurs. He dries his face off with the towel, and looks at Sherlock in the mirror again. Sherlock looks back at him, refuses to look away. He owes John that much.

After a moment, John’s shoulders slump, and he frowns. “I miss you,” he says, voice very quiet, but very clear in the hush of their small bathroom.

Sherlock frowns in return. Something inside him cracks, shatters, and crumbles away, leaving him desperate for John, desperate to have something of the closeness they’re both missing. He has to look away from John’s reflection, his own shoulders falling, defeated.

“I miss being held by you, Sherlock. Even if it hurts. I can’t stand this.”

It’s the most that John has said about this separation between them. It’s the first time he’s admitted to how hard a time he’s having, without his empathy, without even being able to seek the comfort of being held by another person.

It burrows into Sherlock’s chest and ignites.

“We’re figuring something out,” Sherlock decides. “Right now. Right bloody now.”

He turns on his heel and leave the bathroom through the door that leads into their bedroom. The bed is still the way it was when he left this morning, John’s side rumpled and his side neatly made. He pulls the covers back and turns to John, who is standing in the door of the bathroom, watching him with a familiar amused look, though his eyes are still red-rimmed.

“What are you doing, Sherlock?”

“It’s muffled, yes, by fabric? The sensitivity? The pain?”

John nods, slowly. “Yes.” 

Sherlock nods. “I’ll be right back.”

John nods slowly, and Sherlock leaves him standing by the bed to go through the flat, gathering up as many blankets as he can find. He even goes so far as to go upstairs and get the duvet off John’s old bed as well, shaking it out quickly to dispel any dust that may have settled there recently. 

He returns to their room and starts spreading the blankets and duvet out before he toes off his shoes and gets into the bed. He layers each one of the blankets over his body and lays back. 

“John, get in.”

John stands by the side of the bed for a moment looking down at him. There’s a look on his face that Sherlock can’t quite interpret; is it fondness? Is it hope? He can’t tell. So he makes an impatient gesture, and John smiles. He takes off his own shoes and crawls into bed, settling close to Sherlock.

Sherlock sighs. “This would probably work better if you just lay on top of me.”

“Cheeky,” John murmurs, but he obeys, shifting his weight over onto Sherlock. Sherlock snakes his hands out from under the myriad covers and starts carefully folding them over John’s back. He just needs John to be covered enough so that Sherlock can hold him. That’s all he needs.

Then he’ll be able to breathe again. He’ll be able to think again, with John in his arms, where he belongs. 

John lays quiet against him, taking deep breaths. He settles with his head against Sherlock’s chest and doesn’t speak. When Sherlock has got the edges of all of the covers layered over John as well, he settles his arms on John’s back and sighs. 

“Does it hurt?”

“No,” John murmurs. “Not yet, anyway. This is nice. Thank you, Sherlock. I wish we’d done this a while ago.”

They stay like that for a long time, not speaking, just breathing together.


	18. Chapter 18

The next night, John approaches Sherlock in the lounge, where he’s laid out on the sofa in what John sometimes thinks of as his “corpse position”, his arms crossed and his eyes shut. Sometimes, John has to stop and watch him for a few moments just to make sure he’s still breathing. 

In the past, sometimes he would give in to the impulse to cross the room and spread himself out alongside or atop Sherlock, indulge himself in what ended up occasionally being a rather one-sided cuddle. John wishes he could do that now.

Well, he can do something somewhat similar. A pale imitation, and yet.

It’s all he has. It’s the only thing that has brought him any sort of peace since he woke up with a blank head and the pain of touching Sherlock snaking up his arm.

“Sherlock?”

“Yes, John?” He’s been calmer, all day, and John envies him that. He was able to take comfort last night, from holding John. When John had finally extricated himself, his muscles twitching with the pain that was starting to radiate, Sherlock had been fast asleep.

John had kipped on the couch. He hadn’t slept much, or well.

Not that John hadn’t taken his own comfort from it, but he’s been increasingly anxious all day long. He’s had a low grade headache since he woke up this morning, alone on the sofa with a blanket spread over him, and the paracetemol he took for it did absolutely nothing to make it go away.

He’s terrified of leaving the flat, though he doesn’t think he can admit it out loud. 

“Do you think we could…?” He lets his voice trail away, hopeful.

Sherlock’s eyes open and he looks across the room at John. “Yes, of course, John.”

John nods and smiles a bit. He feels like it doesn’t quite sit right on his face, the smile, but he tries. He smiles at Sherlock for a moment, and then walks away, back into their bedroom. 

Sherlock comes in a moment later; John has sat down on the side of the bed. He watches at Sherlock gathers up the blankets from where they’d been piled and starts spreading them on the bed again.

“Can we switch, this time?” John asks.

“Yes.”

“Thanks.”

“There’s no need to thank me, John.”

His smile feels much more comfortable on this face this time.

\----

Sherlock turns the lights out before he slides onto the bed and presses against John. 

\----

John breathes.

\----

John finds it easier to talk in the dimness of their room, half-lit by the light in the kitchen that is still on. Neither of them has moved in a long time, neither of them has spoken.

John starts, voice soft.

“I’ve missed you,” he says.

“I know,” Sherlock replies, just as soft.

John is all but asleep when Sherlock speaks again, “I love you.”

John slips into sleep quietly and completely.

It’s the best night of sleep he’s had since this whole mess began.

\----

John feels increasingly brittle and withdrawn. He feels like he’s slowly desiccating, that a strong wind may knock him over at any given moment, and that he’d shatter when he hits the ground. He is no longer John Watson, he is John Watson’s dried up husk of a body, not yet aware that it isn’t even alive anymore.

He sleeps more and more, but never well.

He feels exhausted all the time, and yet, every time he retreats into sleep, which is often, he accomplishes nothing. He only pines for what was, and tosses and turns in nightmares that seem to grow more vivid each time he has them.

John knows that Sherlock is worried about him, for him. He doesn’t need to feel it to know that. He can see it in Sherlock’s eyes, in the way the follow him around the flat. He can feel it all the time.

He spends more and more time in their room, huddled in bed, too tired, too run down to even venture down the hall. John rarely goes downstairs to sit with Mrs Hudson and watch bad telly anymore. 

He hasn’t been out with Greg in weeks; hasn’t even answered any of his texts. He hopes that Greg and Mycroft go off on holiday and never come back. 

They deserve some happiness, the two of them.

A touch from anyone has become too much for him to bear. The merest brush sends him into a tailspin of visions that he can’t pull himself out of, can’t protect himself from.

The only protection is staying inside, in not touching anyone at all.

He'd never realized just how much he needs simple physical contact until he figures out that he cannot have any of it anymore.


	19. Chapter 19

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm posting this on its own, because it's super late and I'm not quite finished chapter 20 just yet. I am working on it today, but I'm also heading home from California tomorrow (on MY BIRTHDAY, no less, THANKS MOM), so I don't know if a) I'll finish it before then and b) be able to get it posted even if I do. Because packing.
> 
> After that, the last three chapters are going to be posted one by one, because they're mostly wrap up. ...Um, spoilers? The chapter count should stay the same at this point, as I have a loose plan for the last three chapters, and one of them mostly written, though it might end up being two, because I wrote it before I started the story and I've expanded how I want the end to go.
> 
> As always, this hasn't been beta'd. I feel like this story as a whole would've benefitted from that, so... I guess I'm sorry? I dunno, I like it, but I think I could've done better.
> 
> Thanks to all the wonderful people who've let me whinge at them about this story over the last few months, including Moony, Mydwynter, PrettyArbitrary, and other people I'm forgetting right now. If I forgot you, I'm sorry, please feel free to call me on it.

The scowl Sherlock is wearing when he slams the taxi’s door and stalks onto the crime scene is fierce enough that none of the usual whispers and snide remarks that come from the peanut gallery are in evidence. Not a single one. It’s almost enough to penetrate the fog of misery he’s been stuck in, almost enough to register that he’s being _obvious_ in how he feels, that he’s acting human--which he tries not to do around the Met for what should be abundantly clear reasons. It’s almost enough. Almost. 

He can see the relief on Lestrade’s face, that he’s come out to this pathetic crime scene, that he’s going to _fix it_ , and it is loathsome. He sees the relief, and he sees it fade into concern, and that’s even worse.

Sherlock just wants to work. The Work is eternal, it is constant.

Everything else is just transport.

Maybe if he keeps telling himself that, he’ll start to believe it.

\----

Sherlock at a crime scene is usually alight. 

He is incandescent when in his element. It lights him from within, like holy fire. The reflection of it turns John’s skin golden; he follows Sherlock with his eyes, with his body, with his breaths of “amazing” and “brilliant”, a supplicant at the altar of Sherlock, and yet. Sherlock defers to him, Sherlock reflects John. Sherlock burns bright _for_ John, and for no one else. It’s plain to see, to anyone who cares to observe; it’s just that most people don’t see it.

It looks like peace, on his face. It looks like contentment, when he’s seeing all the things that no one else can see.

The only other time Greg has ever seen that sort of peace on his face has been on those rare occasions when he catches Sherlock looking at John when he thinks no one is looking at either of them. It breaks his heart a little, knowing that exists for Sherlock, and knowing just how far from anything resembling peace the current situation is.

Even Greg admits that it can be pretty amazing to watch Sherlock when he’s in his element (though he doesn’t usually do it in mixed company. Or in front of Sherlock. Or really to anyone other than Mycroft, who at least understands). 

Annoying, yes of course, because Sherlock does so love to flaunt his genius and his tendency to leave the plebes--i.e. everyone--in his dust. It’s a trait that his brother shares, and while it’s endearing in Mycroft, it’s not so much in Sherlock. It’s got Greg in trouble more than once, but it is generally worth it. His closure rate is the highest in CID.

Sherlock is not enjoying himself this time. This is clearly not where he wants to be. His mind is a million miles away, even though some small piece of it is working the details, observing and filing and making those brilliant leaps he always makes.

His face is locked into the same miserable scowl that was there when he climbed out of the cab and swept onto the scene with none of his usual grace. 

At first, Greg was relieved that he’s here. This one is confusing, it seems like it’s right up Sherlock’s street. 

But the relief quickly fades as Sherlock draws near. There’s none of the usual fire in his eyes. There’s nothing there but misery, masked by the thinnest veneer of blankness, and it’s patently obvious to anyone who knows Sherlock at all what the reason for the misery must be: John’s not with him.

Lestrade knows it’s more than that, though. It’s not just that John’s not with him physically, it’s that John’s not with him mentally, either. Greg sighs. He’s worried about the both of them. He’d never thought he’d see Sherlock like this, never thought he’d live to see the day that Sherlock needs someone the way he needs John, or that he’d see the day that Sherlock starts to fade away without him near.

Because that’s what’s happening. Sherlock is fading away.

He can only imagine what sort of shape John is in, and Greg is suddenly terrified that he hasn’t heard from John in so long, not even a text to turn down his multiple invites out for pints.

Greg has been after John for a few weeks now, to come out for pints again. Anything to get him out of the house, out from under the hyper-awareness of Sherlock’s knowing and over-possessive gaze, anything to remind him that there’s life still to be lived, even without his weird psychic thing.

Even without the link to Sherlock he’d forged. 

Greg had sat down, after the first time he took John out for drinks and they talked, and had thought back through all the stories his granddad used to tell, to try and remember if there were any about a linked couple losing their bond. 

He couldn’t come up with any. He’d talked to Mycroft about it, briefly, but Mycroft didn’t know any more about it than Greg did, and was less willing than Greg to bring it up with either of them, seeing as Sherlock is Sherlock, and Mycroft has never broached the subject with John, wanting to leave the two of them some small piece of privacy.

Greg watches Sherlock step gingerly around the scene, murmuring to himself as he examines the body and its environs. After a few minutes of watching him, making sure Sherlock is paying little to no attention to him, Greg slips his phone from his pocket and sends a quick text. He has a reply a few moments later, and he sighs, though it isn’t precisely in relief.

\----

Lestrade is still looking at him with that loathsome, cloying concern when Sherlock is finished with the scene, and with the crime. Simple. Barely a four, he needn’t have even left the flat. He could have solved this over tea, from the file.

He got dressed for this? Dull.

Sherlock reports his findings to the detective inspector and turns to go.

“Dammit.” He turns to shoot a glare at Lestrade. “This was you, wasn’t it?”

Lestrade just shrugs. 

“Meddlesome,” Sherlock hisses. 

Lestrade shrugs again, and Sherlock scowls at him.

Nevertheless, he stalks across the road to where his brother is stood, leaning against one of his innumerable black sedans. 

“What do you want, Mycroft?”

Mycroft looks him up and down, one simple sweep of his eyes, and Sherlock feels twelve years old again, like he nearly always does around his brother. It takes a serious act of will to maintain his posture, not to hunch over and hang his head as though he’d done something wrong yet again, set something on fire, lost mother’s pearls--and they weren’t _lost_ they were _buried_ , he’d known precisely where they were because he had a map to lead him back to them.

Mycroft speaks quietly, “I merely wish to give you a ride home, brother. You insist upon spending far too much money on taxis.”

Sherlock nearly shuffles his feet. But he doesn’t argue. There’s no point.

And part of him, perhaps, wants to spend a few minutes in his brother’s company.

\----

There had been a time when he could crawl into Mycroft’s lap and let his big brother make everything better with only his presence.

Unfortunately, that was many years ago. 

No one can fix this.

\----

Most of the drive--and Sherlock notes that the driver is taking his sweet time arriving back at Baker Street, no doubt at Mycroft’s very strictest behest--is quiet. Mycroft sits in his seat, looking out the window at the passing London scenery, hands folded in his lap. He is actually watching Sherlock in the reflection on the tinted glass. Sherlock is sat across from him, glaring at nothing in particular. 

Eventually, Mycroft speaks. “How is John?” he asks, voice soft. 

“I don’t know,” Sherlock grits out. His own hands are twisted together, so tight his knuckles have gone white and bloodless.

“I could, perhaps, make a few calls on his behalf,” Mycroft ventures, still speaking softly, gently.

Sherlock doesn’t say anything. He stares at his hands.

“There are resources, Sherlock. Doctors who specialise--”

Sherlock shakes his head vehemently. He can’t speak around the lump in his throat, the one he won’t acknowledge. 

“Are you sure, Sherlock?” Mycroft’s voice is nearly hesitant. Sherlock can hear the concern in it, and he hunches his shoulders against it. 

“We won’t go back there, Mycroft,” he manages. It’s embarrassing how small his voice sounds.

“No,” Mycroft agrees. 

Something eases in Sherlock, something he hadn’t realized had clenched in fear at Mycroft’s suggestion of doctors, of tests, of the possibility of Baskerville. 

It could help.

Sherlock knows he would do anything to help John, to make him whole again. He looks up at Mycroft, who is gazing at him steadily. For a moment, he sees his big brother as he used to.

Sherlock blinks, and it’s gone. He is Mycroft, the British Government, the thorn in Sherlock’s side once again.

“I’ll mention it to him,” he concedes.

Mycroft nods.

The rest of the drive is quiet.


	20. Chapter 20

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This took me a bit longer to finish than I was expecting. Tough couple of weeks, I suppose.
> 
> Only a few more chapters now! And no more angst, I promise.

They pass each other like strangers in the flat, careful not to brush too close or make too much eye contact. Whole days pass where they don’t even look at one another; it’s too painful. It feels like they’re more like acquaintances than flatmates, exchanging only the briefest of greetings. John doesn’t make tea for Sherlock much anymore. 

They’ve both isolated themselves, exchanging only the occasional leaden, laden look across the room, full of things unsaid that cannot be uttered. But John has probably isolated himself more than Sherlock has, simply because of the constant pain. He’s not used to being in pain all the time; he’s not sure he can bear it.

John spends more and more time in his old room, hiding amidst the gathering dust and his own sense of isolation. He can feel Sherlock’s gaze on him whenever they’re in the same room, like a weight on his skin, making it prickle and itch. Sherlock’s eyes follow him even when John doesn’t look back at him. He can’t stand it, just as he can’t stand how much he aches for Sherlock, how much he misses him. 

John’s head hurts constantly, and nothing he does seems to have any effect on it. He spent a few days popping paracetemol like candy before giving up in the face of how bad that can end up being, the doctor part of his brain screaming at him about liver damage. He’s tried one or two stronger things, and none of them have worked either, so he suffers through it. He spends a lot of time laying in bed with an arm or the blankets or a pillow over his eyes, trying to quiet the auras, trying to blot out the pain.

He sleeps whenever his body will allow him the escape, but it never lasts for very long, it’s never good sleep, it only lets him pass the time a little until the pain wakes him again.

He avoids Sherlock, because he yearns. He wants to walk into Sherlock’s arms and never leave them again, never be parted from Sherlock again. He doesn’t trust himself, and he shies away from the pain of the separation, and the possibility of how much pain giving in would cause him.

Everything hurts.

Absolutely, utterly, everything.

John feels as though he’s about to go mad with the aching in his head, the way it’s pounding in time with his heartbeat, tha-thump, tha-thump, tha-thump.

\----

He’s in his bed--not actually his at all, but Sherlock’s old mattress, from before he’d had John’s brought downstairs to their shared room, and it _is_ the less comfortable of the two mattresses, but John is afraid to risk crawling into _that_ bed right now, afraid of what would happen, afraid that Sherlock would join him, afraid it would make his head explode with the pain or send him completely ‘round the twist.

He’s in his bed, one arm draped across his eyes when the sound of Sherlock climbing the stairs filters through. His steps are slow, hesitant in a way Sherlock never is, never should be.

“John?”

John makes a vague noise of acknowledgement; he can’t speak above a whisper right now without it making his head hurt.

“Lestrade’s called,” Sherlock says, his own voice incredibly soft in the stillness of the room.

John makes another noise.

“Do you need anything, before I go?”

John manages to shake his head, once.

“I don’t suppose--?”

John shakes his head again.

“No, I didn’t think so.”

There’s silence for a few moments before Sherlock speaks again, “I’m sorry, John.”

John doesn’t bother replying to that.

\----

He sleeps, for a while.

\----

Things are different when he wakes up again. Different, or worse, he’s not sure which. Both. It’s probably both.

He feels a bit like he’s floating, when he goes downstairs to make himself a cup of tea. He feels a bit like he’s floating through London, touching on every single person he comes across--and that is not an insignificant number of people. He floats through every possible iteration of human emotion, complete and incandescent joy to crushing, suicidal depression and back again; he feels every single type of love and hate and indifference possible, each a pinprick against his consciousness, each a separate pain and separate pleasure, until he’s filled up with all of it, unsure where his body is anymore, wholly occupied with the tide of emotion in his head.

\----

He’s aware of himself, off and on throughout the day, aware that he’s in bed in the flat with the pillow pressed over his eyes. The awareness is fleeting each time, shorter and shorter before he floats off again on the tide of the city.

He can feel, out there in the sea of London, the sparks of people he knows, people he cares about. John can pick them out, one by one, touching upon them, reassuring himself that they’re all still alive, still moving about and living their lives.

A few times, he wonders if _he_ is still alive, or if this is what death is: passing into the awareness of the city. But then his body reasserts itself once again, and John knows that no, he’s not dead yet.

Sherlock is out there, and John can feel him, feel all of him, with more clarity than ever before. It is at once terrifying and thrilling, knowing every nook and cranny of his bond-mate’s mind with such startling lucidity. It’s nearly painful, but entirely wonderful, how much there is to Sherlock, the depth of him, John revels in it. He wants to wallow in it.

John feels a surge of love, of affection, strong enough that it brings him back to himself for a bit.

The pounding in his head has eased, somewhat. He breathes a brief sigh of relief at that. Perhaps the worst of this is over.

He can feel Mrs. Hudson downstairs in her flat, puttering about. She seems all right at the moment, but she’s been worrying about the both of them lately, fretting the way she does, because she loves them both like they’re her own. He can tell by the way her worry feels that it’s been about for a while; it pricks at him.

John tries to reassure her, to lay some small portion of “it’s ok, we’ll be all right,” over her. He feels it settle, but he’s not sure it works.

He’s not entirely sure they will be all right.

He’s not sure he’s even feeling the things he thinks he’s feeling. It all feels different, in his head. Perhaps it’s finally driven him insane, and this is his poor mind’s way of coping.

\----

He sleeps again. For a little while.

\----

John can tell when Mrs. Hudson takes her soother that night, because it leaves him feeling woozier and woozier, and then more than a little bit stoned.

He giggles to himself, a little, as he gets up and wanders--floats--downstairs. There’s leftover takeaway in the fridge, on the food shelf, and he inhales it cold whilst stood over the sink in the kitchen. He giggles to himself again when he realises he’s got the munchies.

John makes himself tea and toast, and manages to take them into the lounge, collapsing on to the sofa with both.

The next couple of hours sort of float past him, hazy and pleasant. He’s starting to see why Mrs. Hudson is so adamant about taking her soothers.

Eventually, John finds himself still on the sofa, eyes drooping, body drooping. His head doesn’t hurt anymore, which is nice, but his whole body feels worn out and vaguely sore.

It’s early yet, and he knows there was something he was waiting for, something he meant to do, but he doesn’t remember what it was, so John shambles down the hall and into their room. He shucks his clothes slowly, with deliberateness born of how out of it he feels. He doesn’t bother picking them up from where they fall, crawls into bed, and falls asleep almost immediately.


	21. Chapter 21

Newly formed habit had led John to cocoon himself in the blankets on their bed, and when he wakes up, he is warm and cozy, except for his left foot, which is exposed somehow to the chill air of the room and definitely feeling its effects.

There are five slim fingers wrapped around the ankle above that cold foot.

None of him hurts.

A sound escapes John’s throat that is dangerously close to a sob.

John can’t see more than the outline of Sherlock, perched at the end of the bed in the darkness, breath very carefully controlled, hand very carefully wrapped around John’s ankle.

It doesn’t hurt.

None of him hurts.

Even the headache is gone. There is only that lingering soreness, as though he’s gone gone through a very long and wearying day.

John takes a deep, shaky breath and starts unwinding himself from his cocoon.

Sherlock feels unbearably far away, in his head as well as from his arms, but it isn’t until Sherlock starts to unfold himself up the length of the bed towards John that he realizes he’s been speaking, babbling, this whole time, “Sherlock you’re too far away, please, please don’t be so far away, I need you so much closer, Sherlock, please.”

John finally manages to free himself from the blankets as Sherlock crawls right into him, laying himself out nearly on top of John, face pressed into his neck.

Another sound akin to a sob escapes John’s throat. He might be crying. He doesn’t care. Sherlock is murmuring into his skin, and John can’t hear the words, but he doesn’t need to.

Relief.

This is _relief_. 

Profound relief.

Respite.

This is home, for both of them.

It crowds between them, the relief, back and forth, ebb and flow. John marvels that Sherlock’s relief feels in his head like himself; but then, he own relief feels like Sherlock in his arms, so perhaps it isn’t so strange after all, that relief takes on the look and feel of the other person, to both of them. 

At first, they cling, both afraid to let go even a little bit, afraid that this is a cruel dream. John is afraid that he’ll wake alone and in pain, that nothing will have changed, that nothing ever will change. He’s afraid that his empathy will turn out to be truly gone, forever. It makes him cling all the harder, for a while.

As they hold on to one another, things become clearer, slowly and steadily, like slipping into a warm bath, covering and soothing both men. That long-missed connection between them seems to solidify, to reassert itself a little more, slip its long fingers deeper into two minds, and they both start to accept that this is really happening.

John’s breath comes easier with each passing moment, as the thought sinks in: his empathy has returned, it has really and truly come back, and with it the psychic bond between him and Sherlock.

John eventually allows his grip to slacken just enough to allow his hands to wander up and down Sherlock’s back. He’s not sure if he’s reassuring Sherlock or himself. 

Perhaps he’s reassuring both of them.

Sherlock relaxes into him, melts into his body, snuggles as close as he can, breath hot and humid against the sensitive skin of his neck.

Neither of them speaks for a very long time.

John floats on relief and euphoria and Sherlock’s scent strong in his nose, warm and a little bit sweaty, until it isn’t enough.

“I need you closer,” he murmurs, tugging the tail of Sherlock’s shirt from his trousers to get at the warm skin beneath. “So much closer.”

Sherlock makes an “mmm” sound and tightens his grip. It feels as though he melts just a little more into John, shifts a little bit closer.

After a further few moments, during which Sherlock clutches at John’s tee shirt and John rubs circles against the skin at the small of Sherlock’s back with his thumb, John withdraws his hand and pats him gently. “C’mon Sherlock. Get your kit off.”

Sherlock grumbles, but he lets go of John long enough to throw off his shirt and trousers, stripped in a bare instant down to his pants. John only has to take off his vest to be in the same state.

The relief rebounds when Sherlock fits himself against John again, skin against skin.

The connection between them snaps, hums and shivers, crackles down two spines, leaving both of them gasping and shuddering.

“Was not expecting that,” John mumbles. Not that it was unpleasant--quite the opposite.

Although, in all honesty, he has no idea what to expect at all anymore. In anything. His empathy feels rusty, disused, like a muscle suddenly stretched too far, too fast, and his walls are definitely going to need some work. The way emotions filter through his head feels different than it used to, and he’s not sure if this is permanent or not: they’re prickly against his mind, and brighter. That could be the way they’ve always been though, and he just isn’t remembering properly because he was so used to it before, and it’s been so long since he felt anything from someone else.

Sherlock feels about the same as always in his head: prickly, and bright, and very, very welcome.

Sherlock lifts his head to look down at John. He doesn’t speak, but he doesn’t really need to; what John can’t feel along their connection he can easily read in Sherlock’s face, in his eyes. Sherlock doesn’t censor his expressions or his emotions around John very much anymore.

He’s missed this. This closeness, this quiet. It’s a comfortable quiet, a comforting one. John knows that Sherlock is right there, because he can feel him, mentally and physically.

It’s been a while since Sherlock has stared at him in this particular way, like he can’t quite believe his luck. Which is silly, because John is fully aware that he’s the lucky one in their relationship. Sherlock is the extraordinary, amazing, luminous one. Sherlock is the one who shines, the one who burns bright like a star. John is just… John. A doctor, a healer, and an unlucky psychic.

John returns his gaze steadily, and after a moment, Sherlock lifts his hand to trace the contours of John’s face, gently, reverently. John shuts his eyes briefly and lets him go about re-memorizing John’s skin, its texture and the way it must feel under his fingers. It’s a caress, no doubt, and John wallows in the emotion behind it, in the sentiment Sherlock is expressing without words.

He understands the unspoken words of it, and he returns the gesture after a moment, smiling softly, carding his fingers into Sherlock’s hair after he’s traced his brows, his cheekbones, his lips and jaw. He doesn’t comment on the tears that shimmer in Sherlock’s eyes. 

“Hi,” he says, instead.

Sherlock quirks an eyebrow at him, but he responds, voice soft and scratchy. “Hi.”

They gaze at each other from inches apart for long moments, both smiling, unable to contain the shared joy between them. Sherlock sobers first, gazing steadily down at John, his smile dropping away slowly. He takes a deep breath and sighs, dropping his head until his forehead meets John’s.

_I know,_ John thinks. _Me, too._

John shuts his eyes as it swamps him, _this_ , this moment, here with Sherlock, wrapped up together in their bed, together again, safe and whole again.

They stay like that for a long time. John has to breathe deeply, keep his eyes shut against the tide of emotion swirling within him. He can feel Sherlock breathing against him, breaths gusting across his cheek, Sherlock’s chest expanding against his own. His weight is starting to make it difficult to draw a deep breath, but he doesn’t care. He wouldn’t dislodge Sherlock for anything right now.

John is drifting closer to sleep with each breath.

“Sherlock?” he murmurs. His voice comes out slurred with the sleep that’s stealing over him.

“Hmm?”

“I think I’m going to sleep now.”

Sherlock nods; John feels the movement against his forehead, feels Sherlock’s nose ghost along his cheek.

“You won’t leave, will you?”

“No, John.”

“Please don’t. I need you here when I wake up.”

“I will be, John.”

“Promise me.”

“I promise, John.” 

John sleeps.


	22. Chapter 22

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The next morning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Almost there, folks! I'm so happy that all of you have stuck with me as long as you have. I really appreciate it.

Surprisingly, surprised, Sherlock wakes up. He hadn’t meant to sleep. He’d meant to stay awake next to John, with John, with his hands on John, listening to him breathe, feeling him alive and quiet and peaceful beside him, beneath him. Sherlock had meant to revel in the relief of it all, the respite from the desperate longing for John that had been his constant companion ever since John woke up in hospital bereft of his empathy.

Instead, Sherlock had been soothed by John’s deep, even breaths, and had fallen asleep.

Weakness, but he can’t bring himself to be angry over it.

No matter. He has every night of the rest of their lives to lay awake wrapped up in John, tangled together with him, skin against skin. 

Sherlock looks forward to every night of it. He spends a few moments making note of it in his mind palace, so that he never forgets, even during a case, not to ever let a night go by without spending at least a few moments of it in bed, pressed against John.

He feels full. Full of relief, of happiness, of that strange and nebulous thing John calls love. They all ebb and flow within him, eddying and whirling gently back and forth between himself and John. He feels so much he can barely stand it; they’re so complicated. Sherlock thought he’d got used to it, to the way John makes him feel, the emotions that he brings to the surface of Sherlock’s mind, that he forces Sherlock to acknowledge, and talk about.

Sherlock doesn’t want to think about that, because it just leads to thoughts of how little John had talked to him over the past months, and how much that had hurt.

So he won’t think about it.

Instead, he retreats into his own head, though he tries, for once, not to lose track of his body, because it is his body that is tucked into bed with John, not just his mind. Ducking past his mind palace, deeper into his own mind, he finds himself in the safe space John had taught him how to build, the space he hasn’t been to in a long time, because it’s been too painful to look at the door that leads to John’s mind and find it locked, the way barred to him.

The door isn’t locked now. The way is no longer barred, and Sherlock takes a moment to throw open the door before he looks around in the replica of their flat. His walls, the honeycomb walls he’d built at John’s behest, seem to be holding up. If there’s one thing Sherlock is good at, it’s discipline of the mind, so they haven’t deteriorated in his absence.

The bees still buzz all around him, going about their business, heard but rarely seen. There are fewer than there used to be, but their numbers are growing again, slowly and steadily. He wonders if the bees he’d sent into John’s head are still there, or if the enforced separation between them had killed the bees. 

Perhaps it had only sent them into hibernation. He’ll have to ask John about that.

Sherlock stands in the doorway, looking out across the field towards the huge old tree in John’s head. He can hear the breeze whispering through the wheat, but he can’t feel it.

The tree is bigger than it used to be, bigger than he remembers it being, and he can barely see John’s wall where it protects the garden of his mind beneath it. But he knows it’s there.

Sherlock doesn’t venture forward, not right now. There’s time for that later, time enough for curling up in the soothing, rustling wheat and breathing in John, resting contented in the secret corners of his mind, trying to find that sense of peace he knows he’s had before but has never been able to recapture, close to the thump of John’s heart.

He can feel it now, the steady beat of John’s heart, where his hand rests against John’s back. Somewhere in the night as they’d slept, they’d shifted positions, and now instead of Sherlock being mostly on top of John, John is nestled into Sherlock’s side. His head rests on Sherlock’s shoulder, his nose turned up towards Sherlock’s chin, and his arm draped across Sherlock’s ribs. Their legs are tangled together. They are touching still, from head to foot.

Sherlock comes back to himself softly, slowly, letting his eyes drift open again. 

John is still asleep against him, his breath coming in warm, humid, regular gusts across Sherlock’s neck. He fills filled up in that strange way that translates everything to pleasure, and he marvels a little bit at that. Even asleep they push and pull between them. Sherlock wonders if it’s the long absence of it between them doing this, sending both of them into hyperdrive, into this place where even asleep they’re pushing things back and forth between them, turning the sensory to the sensual. Idly, he pulls just a hint of it out of John, just a touch, and nudges it back in again, just to feel the delicate shiver that courses through John, the way his spine arches just a little in his sleep, the way it echoes down his own spine. He won’t do more than that, not without John being awake.

Judging by his breath rate and Sherlock’s carefully recorded and filed awareness of John’s sleep patterns, he has a little while yet before John wakes, at least an hour, and most likely more.

That’s ok; it’s nice being here in bed with John’s quiet breath and his warm body. He can work with this. He can enjoy this, these moments of quiet and peace, with things back the way they should be. John’s empathy is back, _John_ is back. Back beside Sherlock, back in his head, back in their bed. Where he belongs. Here.

He lets his mind wander, lets his hand stroke up and down John’s back, and floats on the waves lapping at the edges of his mind, idly wondering if he’ll float out to sea.

Sherlock floats for what feels like a long time, drifting back and forth on the gentle tide between them. It feels like he floats back and forth between his own mind and John’s, and maybe he does. Maybe he does that, floats in and out of both of their heads, but he doesn’t pay much attention to it as it’s happening, so he won’t be certain, later on when he thinks back over this.

He’s still floating when John stirs beside him. John moves only a little at first, shifting against Sherlock, nuzzling in closer, making a murmuring noise low in his throat; Sherlock can feel his lips against the skin of his neck, and he turns his head, shifting a bit in turn so that those soft lips press a little more against his skin. He loves the feel of it, the sheer sensuality of that point of contact; it sends shivers racing down his spine.

A few minutes later, John moves again, making another ‘mmm’ noise as he nears full wakefulness. He turns a little, pushing his nose into Sherlock’s neck and basically cuddling as close as he can.

Sherlock sighs, arching his neck and rumbling in his chest, tightening his arms around John. John responds in kind, though Sherlock can tell he’s not quite fully awake yet.

He feels it when John wakes up, feels the flutter of his lashes against Sherlock’s skin, feels consciousness steal over his mind, shooing away sleep. They are all tangled together, all naked skin and a cocoon of sheets and blanket. 

John sighs against his neck and Sherlock shivers again. He feels John’s chuckle, and then John’s lips pressed over his pulse. 

“Morning,” John murmurs, his voice barely more than breath.

“Mmmm,” Sherlock replies.

“How long have you been awake?”

“Not long. A while. I don’t know.”

John’s silence conveys his surprise as much as the connection between them does.

“It doesn’t matter. Where else would I want to be?”

John’s emotion at that statement is nearly overwhelming. Love, a strong surge of it that lodges in Sherlock’s chest and just _aches_ in the sweetest way possible, and relief, and all of the other complex, wonderful things that John feels for him: all of the affection and the exasperation and devotion and everything else.

John doesn’t answer him aloud, instead he turns his attentions to Sherlock’s neck, nuzzling slowly up and down its length, lips following nose and nose following lips, the occasional nip of teeth drawing a gasp from Sherlock, expanding slowly to include his collarbones, his suprasternal notch, his jaw, his chin. Sherlock melts into the bed under his ministrations, slow and careful and tender, so tender.

This goes on for some time, Sherlock has no idea how long. He doesn’t care how long it is, he simply wallows in the sensations that John is instilling in him, he wallows in the churning tide of the emotions between them, happy enough to drown in it.

Sherlock might be talking; he might be babbling out nonsense and endearments, professing his undying devotion to John while John slowly drives him mad with lips and teeth and tongue, while John overwhelms him slowly, before he sets about overwhelming him quickly, pushing more of the tide of relief and affection and devotion and love between them into Sherlock, hard and fast.

Sherlock gasps and moans, his back arching and his hands scrabbling at the sheets, at John’s bare skin, finally settling against his head, in his hair. He’s barely able to draw a breath to moan again before John pulls the emotions from him, dragging them out slowly, sensuously, so they pull at Sherlock’s mind, so he feels them being pulled from them physically, like nails down his spine, and then pushes it all back into again, harder and faster.

John pounds him, setting a relentless pace, and Sherlock can do nothing but surrender, nothing but hang on to John and moan as his mind is flooded, until he completely falls apart, the mental orgasm taking him suddenly, whiting out everything, leaving him a gasping, sweaty heap sprawled across the bed.

He comes back to himself slowly, idly wondering if he needs to leave the bed at all that day, or if they can simply stay put and get lost in each other, over and over again.

John lifts his head from where he was again nuzzling gently at the skin of Sherlock’s neck. Sherlock is pretty sure he’s going to have stubble burn for days, and he’s entirely all right with that.

“All right?” John asks, voice amused and raspy. Sherlock is mostly a puddle on the bed, boneless and floating on the hormones.

“Mmm,” is all he manages to say in reply. After a few minutes, “You?”

John chuckles. “That was fantastic. God, I’ve missed you.” He props his chin on his fist on Sherlock’s chest and looks up at him. Sherlock smiles at him.

“I’ve missed this,” John adds.

Sherlock nods. “Can we stay in bed all day?”

John’s face lights up in a huge grin. “Oh, yeah.”

So they do just that.


	23. Chapter 23

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And here we come to the end. This little chapter has actually been written since July. JULY, PEOPLE. I've been working on this monster SINCE JULY. MY GOD. 
> 
> I'm so glad to have finally come to the end. It's been rough at times, but I'm pretty happy overall, even though I think it could use some revision in places. Anyway. Now what? 
> 
> I DON'T KNOW. 
> 
> There might be something of a epiloguey sort of sequel to this. It wants some more percolation before I can start it, though. 
> 
> After that, who knows. Maybe I'll start playing with the 'verse in which Sherlock is a necromancer again. Or the one in which John is Death.

Later that afternoon…

John comes out of the bathroom and stops and stares at him for a long time before he holds out his hand to Sherlock, and Sherlock stares back the whole time, as tension mounts between them. Sherlock is hesitant to take his hand, hesitant after how long it’s been since he could safely touch John, hesitant even though they’ve spent most of the day plastered to each other, in each other’s heads. Somehow, he’s afraid, and he can feel that John is too. Such a short amount of time apart, and the fear has returned, already. It's still such a relief to feel what John feels that his heart pounds with it, so hard he's sure John must see it. But John is also incandescently happy, relieved, excited, so much so that he’s practically glowing with it, and Sherlock knows John's heart is pounding, too.

“Please, Sherlock,” John says, soft, his voice shaking with need and with something else, harder to name. 

Sherlock unfolds himself from where he’d been curled up against the headboard, stands, and crosses the room to take John’s hand. John shudders, but it’s not the sort of shudder Sherlock has grown so warily used to seeing, the shudder of pain, of anxiety and anger and desolation, all those things his touch made John feel that he couldn’t share in. This is a shudder of relief, of happiness, of intense pleasure at the simple skin to skin contact, that isn’t sending pain through John in waves of increasing intensity. This is a shudder of memory, of the happy hours they’ve spent together already today.

They stand frozen in that tableau for what feels like ages, their fingers entwined, palm to palm, both of them reveling in the relief that they can touch each other again, that the connection between them has finally healed, that John’s empathy has returned, that this doesn’t cause John pain any longer. It’s a different sort of enjoyment than what they’ve already done; this is more like marveling at its simplicity, at the way their connection seems to grow stronger with each passing moment, twining around them, binding them ever tighter together. They’re both grinning at each other as the relief of it flows back and forth between them. Sherlock feels it like a warm breeze, redolent of grasses and the sound of leaves rustling, the call of birds and a child’s giggle. For John, it’s the warmth of home, the smell of honey and a cheerful fire in the grate, the buzz of bees and the rustling of flowers in an invisible wind.

It’s John who moves first, taking a step towards the bed. Sherlock follows, helpless, in his wake.

Once there again, next to the bed, John lets go of Sherlock’s hand, almost reluctant. There’s so much there already, such relief, such happiness. He needs more than that, he needs to feel everything Sherlock has felt without him, needs to let Sherlock know everything he felt, but he wants to take his time, he wants to wallow in this, he wants to drown in it, drown in Sherlock, drown them both. 

John crawls onto the bed and sits up against the headboard. Sherlock stands at the side of the bed and stares at him; he’s not observing, or at least he’s not observing in his usual way. Instead, he’s feeling, along the edges of their connection, feeling it solidify and meld back into its place in his mind. He’s feeling what John is feeling, sharing it, and as each minute ticks past, he gets more comfortable with that presence being back in his head. It feels right.

John feels it too, that sense of rightness, that things have settled back into where they’re supposed to be. He holds out his hand again, beckoning, and Sherlock obeys, crawling into bed and over John, straddling him. He settles in close, with his knees on either side of John’s hips, and sighs. They’re barely touching, yet, and still, John can feel every inch of Sherlock as though they’re already pressed together. He can feel the warmth of him, and he’s missed this, too. He’s missed closeness, having something to touch and be touched by.

Sherlock smiles down at John, and he can feel that it’s the one John likes, that smile that he doesn’t give to anyone but John, sort of crooked and uncertain and entirely genuine. He wants to burrow into the way that makes John feel, he wants it to overwhelm him, he wants John to overwhelm him.

He must sway with it, closer to John, because John lifts his arm and places his hand on Sherlock’s chest, over his heart. Sherlock mirrors the gesture, and notes that both of their hearts are pounding. If he were more sentimental, he might marvel that they seem to pound in unison. His other hand moves of its own volition, smoothing across John’s skin until it can clasp around John’s neck, settling there, making them both sigh. John’s eyes flutter shut.

John returns his smile, dragging his eyes open again, and he glows at Sherlock, _feels_ at Sherlock, and Sherlock feels back at him. John’s other hand settles at Sherlock’s hip, slipping under the waistband of his trousers to rest over his hipbone.

“I’ve missed you,” John murmurs. 

Sherlock can only nod. He cannot find the words to express how bereft he’s felt without John in his head, despite remaining at his side. He’s felt so empty, so lonely, it sticks in his throat just thinking about it.

“I’ve missed you in my head,” John continues, moving his hand to stroke through Sherlock’s hair. Sherlock lets his eyes fall shut to concentrate on the way that feels. 

“And I’ve missed you in my heart.” John trails his hand down Sherlock’s neck and back to his chest, leaving goosebumps in his wake. 

“And I’ve missed you in this bed.”

Sherlock crowds closer to John, pressing his face into John’s neck, inhaling him deep, unable to do more, unable to get as close as he’d like. He wants to crawl inside John and stay there forever. He has missed John more than he can say, in his head and in his heart and next to him in bed and on top of him in bed, and he’s overwhelmed with how much he feels now that John is back in his head, and they’re together in their bed, he drowns in it, and he clings to John in hopes of dragging him under as well.

John wraps his arms around Sherlock and holds him close as he trembles, clinging to John, overwhelmed by the intensity of it. John feels only barely less overwhelmed than Sherlock, but he tries to breathe through it, to let it flow through him, not to hold on to it too hard and get swept away in it. When he’s started to calm down, John strokes his hands through Sherlock’s hair again and lifts his head. 

“Hey, you all right?”

“John.” 

And it’s said so plaintively, with so much affectionate exasperation, that John can’t help but laugh and press his lips to Sherlock’s. Sherlock smiles into the kiss, sighs, and returns it, wriggling in John’s arms and settling into the kiss. It’s slow and languid, almost tentative to start. It’s been so unbearably long since they’ve been able to do this, since they’ve been able to enjoy each other, and they both take their time with it, relearning the feel of each other, the way each of them kisses, their sighs and murmurs, the way John’s hands frame Sherlock’s face, the way Sherlock settles his own at John’s waist, holding on to him like he’s the most precious thing in the world. 

With each kiss, John pushes gently into Sherlock, filling him up, filling them both up with pleasure, with love, with all the good things he’s missed, all the things that had felt so far away from him for so long, all the things he’d been so terrified that he’d lost forever. Sherlock returns it all and then some, slowly, so slowly, drawing it out as much as he can, so slow it’s nearly agonising.

“Make me forget,” John murmurs. “I don’t want to hurt anymore.”

“Never never never,” Sherlock murmurs back, not even entirely sure what he’s promising, but he promises everything, he’ll die before he breaks this promise.

They approach and then teeter on the edge, sipping from each other with each slow kiss, content to rest on the precipice together, neither falling, neither letting the other go. Sherlock wants this to last forever, he wants John to feel nothing but this, until it washes everything that’s come before, all the pain and loneliness of their separation away, until John can’t remember any of it, can’t remember anything but the pleasure of the moment.

“I want,” John murmurs, with a gasp, eventually. His hands are everywhere, clutching Sherlock close.

“Hmm?” Sherlock responds, relinquishing John’s lips to nibble along his jaw, to pant in his ear and nuzzle behind it, where he knows John is sensitive. John shudders against him, and Sherlock shudders with him as the pleasure flows between them.

John moans, and Sherlock smiles, shifting so he can slide his arms behind John, holding him closer. John clings to him.

“What do you want, John?” Sherlock mumbles against his neck, when it becomes clear that John, pliant in his arms, floating on the pleasure, high with it, isn’t going to continue his previous statement. He leans back just a bit to look at John.

John, whose lips are swollen, who has a faint trace of stubble-burn against his cheek and his neck--Sherlock thinks, _mine_ \--stares up at him, his irises nearly lost in how blown his pupils are. He clings as best he can, but it’s mostly Sherlock and the headboard keeping him from slumping into a puddle of pleasure. 

“I want to watch you come,” John murmurs. He smoothes his hands up Sherlock’s back and into his hair, cradling his head and tilting just so before drawing Sherlock in for another kiss, deeper somehow than their kisses had been, more intense, more desperate, and more tender. 

There’s more to this kiss than its predecessors, so much more than desire, it can’t be divided up between them, it belongs to both of them, compounded and exponential, all of the desire, all of everything they’ve ever felt together gathered up and shared between them, and it leaves them both moaning brokenly.

“Yes,” Sherlock gasps, and he’s not sure if he even manages to say it out loud, but he knows John hears it, because his eyes go even darker, and he drops his hands to Sherlock’s waistband and starts pushing at it, his hands scrabbling, desperate now. 

Together, they strip off, and Sherlock crawls back into John’s lap, wrapping his arms around John’s neck and pressing them together from forehead to groin, kissing him as deeply as he can, with everything he’s ever felt for John in it.

“Christ,” John gasps into his mouth. “Sherlock, I’m going to burst, I can’t feel this much.”

“Shh,” Sherlock soothes, “it’s okay, it’s all right.” And he rocks into John, making them both cry out at the delicious friction.

“Oh God,” John moans. 

Sherlock soothes him, hands in his hair, down his arms, taking them up and wrapping them around Sherlock’s own waist, still rocking them together, sweat and pre-come mingling between them. Sherlock spares a brief, broken half-thought for how much he wants to bottle and test their combined effluvia, and John chuckles into his mouth, dispelling a little of the tension, only to have it replaced by Sherlock’s next smooth undulation against him. His hands fall to Sherlock’s bum, gripping tight and pressing them harder together.

 

He keeps the pace slow; neither of them can handle any more than that, and they start to push at each other again. 

“Together?” John manages. 

Sherlock nods, smearing his lips against John’s. It’s barely a kiss at this point; mostly it’s them panting together, exchanging breath and gasps, moans and the odd occasional word of praise, or to soothe, or to encourage.

It stays slow as the pleasure rises between them, closer and closer to the edge, closer than they were before. When he feels them about to tip over, he slows just a bit more and leans hard into him, pushing and pulling, and they both crash gasping into orgasm.

When Sherlock is able to move again, a few minutes or a few centuries later, he leans back on his haunches and looks at the mess between them.

“That was...” he says quietly.

“Intense,” John finishes. “Yes.”

The grin at each other like fools for a little while, before John speaks again. “You’re making my legs numb.” 

Sherlock chuckles and flops to the side, next to John. John slumps down beside him. “I think I could sleep forever.”

“I think I want biscuits,” Sherlock replies. 

John giggles. 

Sherlock gets to his feet, shaky. His limbs feel like jelly. He makes a detour into the bathroom to clean himself off, tossing another wet flannel at John on the bed--he hears it land with a wet plop and John makes a noise of protest--before shuffling down the hall and into the kitchen to rummage for some biscuits. He grabs a couple of glasses of water as well, before shuffling back into the bedroom.

John takes a glass of water from Sherlock and grabs one of the caramel biscuits out of the package, once Sherlock has settled down into bed next to him.

“I missed you too,” Sherlock mumbles around a mouthful of biscuit, chocolate and caramel.

“I know,” John hums back, taking another biscuit and popping the whole thing in his mouth. 

“I’m glad it came back,” Sherlock adds, after a few more minutes of contented munching on both their parts. “I don’t like the way my head is without you in it anymore.”

“I know, Sherlock. I feel the same.”

“Good.” Sherlock drops the packet of biscuits off the side of the bed, puts their empty glasses next to it. 

“We’re going to get bugs.”

“We will not, Mrs Hudson keeps the place too clean for that.”

They shift and settle into the warmth of the bed, into the warmth of each other, both under the same covers, no pain when John shifts in close and tucks his head under Sherlock’s chin. Sherlock drapes his arms around John and sighs, content, and they soon drift off into sleep, together.


End file.
